


Ice Fishing 101

by FlamingoQueen



Series: The Ancient Art of Selkies [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: (minor and non-bullying), Beach Holidays, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Domestic Avengers, F/M, Found Family, Implied sexy times, M/M, Pool Party, Sam Wilson has a huge family, Selkie Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers Is a Good Bro, Teasing, Tony Stark Is a Good Bro, discussion of the fisherman's wife concept, sofa shenanigans, swimming with a selkie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26912653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlamingoQueen/pseuds/FlamingoQueen
Summary: Sam’s usual post-mission debrief doesn’t tend to include bald-faced lying about the circumstances of a mission failure, but when the truth is you fell through the ice and only survived via the ancient selkie art of rescue spooning in a poacher’s shack, you just gotta lie. After all, you can’t tell people your brand new boyfriend turns into a magical seal.(Or: Bucky gets his arm replaced after his arctic antics, and he and Sam begin to explore their relationship. Will Sam ever get to see his boyfriend in fat, squishy seal mode? Hint: Yes. Yes he will.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Series: The Ancient Art of Selkies [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1963675
Comments: 46
Kudos: 46





	1. Home, Sweet Home

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be my fill for O2: Disability on my Sambucky Bingo card, but it grew and time ran out.
> 
> There shouldn't be anything triggery here, or even explicitly NSFW, but if there is, I’ll warn for it in the end notes.

“You want any help getting sorted?” 

It’s maybe a risky question, offering his help unpacking. Depends on the interpretation, really, and Bucky has been interpreting things pretty accurately so far, but Sam still half-wishes he’d taken a moment to find a better way to maybe invite himself to spend some time with Bucky. 

The last thing Sam wants is to offer up an insult, like he’s assuming Bucky’s going to be useless when he’s down an arm. Hell, the man had hauled Sam and both packs across the ice and set up what fire there was fuel enough for with one arm possibly literally tied behind his back. It’d be a shock if he couldn’t unpack his own gear without help.

But Bucky’s usual post-op behavior includes peeling off from the others and hiding out in his rooms doing who knows what for at least an hour, and Sam… kind of doesn’t want them to go their separate ways this time. It wasn’t a long flight, but he’s kind of looking forward to some more alone-together time now that there’s no threat of freezing to death.

Thankfully, Bucky’s lips pull up at one side to let him know the offer didn’t come off wrong. It’s a tired sort of half-smile, but genuine enough. 

“Yeah, actually,” he says. “Could really use a hand.” Bucky winks like he’s just been clever, and his smile evens out into a full grin when Sam rolls his eyes.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t make a joke as lousy as that one,” Sam says as he falls in beside him, “and hold out for the real joke to come.”

Bucky bumps him with his right shoulder and turns off toward the elevator to head up to the 92nd floor, where his suite of rooms is tucked away on its own. “Bet you can hold out for a while, too, what with your extra hand and all.”

“That doesn’t count as a real joke,” Sam complains. “That’s just another version of the first terrible and unoriginal joke. Come on, Barnes, I know you’ve got better.”

“Tch. You should cut me some slack. Being ‘armless isn’t something I’m used to—it’s not the like the murder cyborg thing, Sammy. I don’t have as many handy one-liners for this.”

“Okay, you’re going to have to stop with the horrible hand and arm puns if you want this fledgling relationship to survive.”

“So I’m killing it, is what I’m hearing.” Bucky elbows the wall panel and nods for Sam to go ahead of him as the elevator opens. 

Sam grins and leans against the back wall. “Sure, but not in the good way.”

“Ninety-two, JARVIS,” Bucky says as the doors slide shut behind him. “If you would.”

“Certainly, Agent Barnes.”

Bucky yawns something that might be a thank you and ignores the rest of the roomy elevator car to squeeze into the corner between Sam and the side wall so he can tip his head to rest on Sam’s shoulder. “Thanks, JARVIS,” he says again, more clearly.

“Of course.”

Sam knocks his foot against Bucky’s as the elevator begins its downright sedate climb to the 92nd floor. “Don’t go falling asleep in here. I’m not hauling your ass back out when we finally get there next year.”

It’s not actually going to take a year, but it’s just one of the things about sharing a Tower elevator with Bucky. Unless it’s an emergency, you aren’t going anywhere fast. He’s a speed demon on a motorcycle, pilots a quinjet like he’s chasing the wind, but an elevator? Molasses slow.

Actually, same with Steve, now that Sam thinks about it. If Stark’s in with you, JARVIS will zip the car somewhere fast enough to leave your stomach behind, but the super soldiers could probably walk up all those stairs and get there faster than JARVIS will take them.

Leaning here with Bucky pressed tight against his flank, this is the first time Sam hasn’t felt slightly impatient on the journey, mostly because of the company and the fact that he can actually let that company know how much he likes it for a change.

“‘M not gonna fall asleep in the elevator,” Bucky grumbles. “I’ll fall asleep on my sofa. Preferably wrapped around you.”

“Well count me in,” Sam says. “Feel like I could sleep for days now that I don’t have somewhere to be.”

“You _do_ have somewhere to be, though. My sofa.”

Sam snorts. “It still covered in books?”

“Uh,” Bucky starts, then pauses. “Shit, I don’t even remember. If there’s books, I’ll kick ‘em off.”

Sam laughs and stands up straight as the elevator slows even further to a full stop. “Or you can stack them neatly somewhere. I’ll even help,” he adds, tugging Bucky forward to get him started. “Since I’ve got two hands, and all.”

“Ass,” Bucky mumbles as he follows. 

There _are_ books on the sofa when Sam slips past Bucky into the sitting room. Looks like a couple of pastel bodice-rippers, a big coffee table art book of stars, and a stack of Nat Geo and Good Housekeeping magazines that slumped over while Bucky was out.

“Well, never let it be said you aren’t eclectic,” Sam says as Bucky disappears into his bedroom to dump his pack.

He traces the cover of one of the romance novels. A tawny-feathered bird man with a ripped up tunic is apparently seducing a half-naked woman on a forest cliff at sunset. There’s a whole pack of wolves howling below the cliff, and some kind of covered wagon in the distance. 

_Moon of Silver, Sun of Gold: Eclipse of Passion_. Not a great title, but the cover art doesn’t seem to be hinting that the contents are any better, so it probably fits. He still doesn’t know why or how Bucky can read these things.

“Thought you were gonna help stack them up,” Bucky says from behind him. “‘Cause of hands.”

Sam rolls his eyes again and does gather up the books to put off to the side. “What’s this one about?” he asks with a nod toward the book he’d been inspecting. 

“Hm? Oh, that’s— ‘kay, so Pierre is a harpy driven from his colony by a terrible secret that I won’t spoil for you. And he and Marguerite are deeply in love despite her pack’s protests that werewolves and harpies can never, _you know_.” He makes a suggestive gesture and adds an eyebrow wiggle.

Before this past mission, Sam would have asked if it was likely to end happily. If Pierre and Marguerite were able to “you know” several times in great detail during the course of the novel. 

But while he does still kind of want to have that bit of banter and explore some of the places it might lead now that they’ve cleared the air, so to speak, he’s suddenly got a much more pressing question.

“Are those real?” he asks. “Harpies? Werewolves?” 

Sam straightens up the magazines in their new pile so they won’t fall over. “Hell, are books like that accurate, if they _are_ real?” 

Do vampires exist, and do they get fatal indigestion around garlic, or do they sparkle in the sunlight? What about Sasquatch? Elves? There’s suddenly so much Sam needs to know.

“Uh.” 

Bucky frowns, like maybe werewolves are a secret only werewolves ought to be sharing with normal humans. And hell, maybe they are. Maybe there are all kinds of magical beings out there and they all keep their own secrets.

“Okay, so,” Bucky starts, and then sinks into the sofa at one end. “Werewolves, yes, do currently exist. I’ve yet to read a book or see a movie or whatever that’s accurate. Harpies… _did_ exist? But I _think_ they’re all dead now. I could be wrong.”

Sam studies him with a frown. He’s saying it all nonchalant, but “I think an entire species of magical bird people is extinct” is not the sort of thing a magical seal person is going to actually _be_ nonchalant about. 

“This is like some gritty urban fantasy novel where all the magical people are slowly being killed off by humans and iron, isn’t it?” Sam has seen those sorts of movies. Hell, even in the Lord of the Rings, there are sad elf conga lines through the forest as they just up and leave the world to men. And hobbits.

Bucky blinks up at him.

“Magic isn’t a wonderful world of new things to explore,” Sam continues, hoping he’s wrong. “It’s a museum of dead people, isn’t it. Isn’t it?”

Bucky shakes his head, but his right hand makes a wobbly see-saw. “Ehh. Depends. If they’re small enough to hide or able to pass as human or some commonplace animal, then they’re probably doing just fine. But you’re not going to see any centaurs galloping down the street or sphynxes running around.”

Sam considers that for a moment. So that would leave, what, shapeshifters, elves, vampires, selkies—obviously—probably mermaids just because the ocean is big and mysterious. There’s probably lots of other things out there he doesn’t even know to think about.

“Well,” he says, “that’s at least not quite as ‘Great Iron Age Extinction Event’ as it could be. Glad there’s still _some_ mystery to the world.” 

“There’s lots of mystery, sure. Like me.” Bucky waggles his remaining hand at him from where his right arm is slung over the back of the sofa. “Come on and sit already, gorgeous. Keep the mysterious selkie company. Take a load off. You’ve got to be tired.”

“Well, only as long as you’re sweet talking me, Barnes.” Sam settles in beside him, leaning into his side. “Better keep that up or I’ll go sit somewhere else, though. Your chair over there is pretty comfy.”

“Rude.” Bucky lets his hand drop to Sam’s shoulder, his thumb lightly stroking the side of Sam’s neck. “You got a real mouth on you, Wilson. Mm. The things I want that mouth of yours to do.”

That’s an invitation if there ever was one. And if Bucky didn’t sound borderline sleepy saying it, Sam would rsvp to that party with an emphatic “yes,” despite being tired himself.

But, hell, Sam’s as exhausted as Bucky sounds. Arctic cold and near-drowning and all the rest, while there was definitely a hell of a bright spot in the mix, takes a lot out of a guy. And probably ripping off your arm, turning into a magic seal, and hauling a waterlogged colleague across the ice does, too.

And lying is surprisingly tiring, as it turns out, especially to colleagues in a mission debriefing. 

Sam’s usual post-mission debrief doesn’t tend to include bald-faced lying about the circumstances of a mission failure, but when the truth is you fell through the ice and only survived via the ancient selkie art of rescue spooning in a poacher’s shack, you just gotta lie. 

After all, you can’t go around telling people your brand new boyfriend turns into a magical seal.

“…rain check?” Sam murmurs.

Bucky laughs softly at his side. “Later on, I’m gonna cash that check so hard, Sammy-doll, you have no idea.”

“I don’t know,” Sam says, tipping his head back to rest on Bucky’s bicep. “Feel like I got a little preview. Betting I’ve got at least _some_ idea.”

“Mmm. Coming soon,” Bucky rumbles in a low announcer’s voice, “in a bedroom near you…”

Sam grins and digs a finger into Bucky’s side. There’s not even a hint of give. No one would look at him and think of a blubber-lined seal. “Dork.”

“Told you, I prefer selkie,” he says, his answering grin audible.

“So where does all the…” Sam shrugs, using the movement to burrow even closer. “Blubber? Pudge? Bulk? Where does it _go_ when you look human? Where is it right now? Because your pelt is soft and warm, but it’s not like there’s a fat layer in there.”

Bucky hums to himself again. “Get ready for the first in a long string of answers you’re going to hate.”

“Lay it on me.”

“Magic,” Bucky announces. “Pocket dimensions. Mystical non-Euclidean physics. Take your pick.”

Great. That’s going to be the answer to everything, he can just tell. And the worst thing about that is it’s probably not even a cop out. 

“So you’re not actually a Tetris grandmaster, like you said? Selkies aren’t naturally gifted in the ancient art of furry origami?” Sam adds a scandalized tone to his voice. “It was all a lie?”

“I do actually have the high score in that group Tetris app Stark pushed to all our phones, so it wasn’t _all_ a lie, doll.” 

Sam snorts. As if it wasn’t all a joke, anyway, while they were packing back up after their clothes dried. Except apparently the Tetris. It occurs to Sam that he doesn’t actually know when Bucky’s joking about this new subject. Not with absolute certainty. He hopes there’s plenty of time to learn the new tells.

“I can see hammerspace, maybe,” Sam says. “You know, for getting a thick pelt big enough to cover two grown men to fit in a pack alongside all the other gear.” He never played D&D himself, but he knows the concept behind a bag of holding. 

But hammerspace falls just a little short when solving the case of the missing pudge. With the pelt all spread out, there hadn’t been blubber anywhere—not on the pelt, not on the man. 

Sam gives Bucky another poke. “It just doesn’t quite logically explain how a guy with as little body fat as you’ve got equals a seal with all the rippling, jiggling squish that entails.”

“Well _there’s_ your problem. ‘Logic,’ ha! He thinks there’s logic behind it.”

“Well you said rules. Different rules apply to you. Something like that. Rules imply logic.”

Bucky scoffs, but it’s somehow a bitter scoff. “Rules imply rules lawyers and legal bullshit and loopholes and people getting screwed over by the more powerful people those rules were made to actually serve.”

“The fisherman’s wife thing,” Sam suggests softly. He burrows his left arm between Bucky and the back of the sofa, curling his hand at Bucky’s hip.

It’s hard to see a village fisherman in the distant past as a “more powerful person” with magic laws made on their behalf, but Sam knows he’s seeing only a small part of the picture, and through fogged glass, what with the inevitable mistranslations through the years and cultural shifts.

“Oh, man.” Bucky huffs softly. “That’s like you take one of those fancy-ass waste-of-space ice sculptures, like a melting swan at the worst kind of fundraising gala. And you put it on top of the tip of an iceberg. And you stand back and look at it and declare the story told.”

He shifts a bit, just until he can kiss Sam’s temple. “Not you, as in Sam. Just, you know, the ‘you’ that goes with the ‘them’ when ‘they say’ stuff.”

“Yeah, no, I got that. Generalized ‘you.’” Sam gives Bucky’s hip a squeeze. “M’not feeling attacked. Truth is, I hardly even know what a selkie is. Thought it was a kind of mermaid with shitty marriage prospects, until a few days ago. Mythology wasn’t a big interest of mine growing up.”

“A mermaid,” Bucky repeats, like it’s the best thing he’s heard in a year. “Oh, I like that. I’m going to have Steve draw me like a mermaid,” he says. “Might swipe one of Nat’s bras for a photo reference. Wear some of Darcy’s nipple pasties. I’m sure she’s got some. She seems like the type.”

Sam shakes his head. “Well, I mean, you have the hair for it.”

“I _do_ have the hair for it.” He yawns. “Got great hair. Best in the Tower when Thor’s off-world. Selkie hair. Passed down through genera—”

“Oh shut up, you dork.”


	2. Tasty Morsels

Sam decides, based on a quick survey of Bucky’s kitchenette, that they will have peanut butter and banana sandwiches for lunch. And maybe some cut up veggies, which he’s borderline surprised to see in abundance in the fridge. 

Bucky always struck him as a chips and pizza kind of guy, but he’s got enough produce in here to put together a salad bar.

“What were you going to do if our mission had actually lasted a lot longer?” Sam waves a bag of green beans. 

“I don’t know. Clean out a fridge full of rotten food, I guess.” Bucky shrugs. “I like having stuff here if I need it. Always stock up before a mission if it’s going to be a short one.”

Sam has to give him that point. He always ends up perusing the communal kitchen after a mission to see if anyone’s left something unlabeled and tasty enough to tide him over until he can get some takeout. 

“Guess I just figured you’d be stocked up on something like cheese and crackers, or some easy mac. Bag of Cheetos, you know?” He tears off a couple of celery stalks and rinses those and a bell pepper, then adds a handful of baby carrots to a bowl. 

“What, not a dozen tins of mackerel?”

“Well, now that you mention it…” Sam casts an exaggerated suspicious look in Bucky’s direction. “Where _is_ your tuna? Or is it sardines? Tell me it’s not actual mackerel.”

Bucky cackles. “I do _not_ eat fish in here. The ventilation is great for crawling through, and less than great about getting rid of fish smells. No seafood allowed.”

Sam would have thought, honestly and not jokingly, that Bucky would have some kind of fish around, being a magic seal person and all. Seals are always eating fish, aren’t they? 

Maybe he doesn’t keep fish around because an absence of fish would throw off suspicion. It’s a stretch, but Bucky’s about as into contingency planning as Natasha, which is to say, entirely into it, bordering on _too_ into it.

He starts slicing veggies. “Hey, so can I ask another question?”

“Mm.” Bucky reaches into the fridge to grab some okra and green beans. “Go for it.”

Sam pauses in his slicing to watch Bucky dump his additional vegetables into a strainer to rinse. Is this going to be a cooking sort of lunch after all, or does he eat those raw? Does he know there are sugar snap peas in the future that actually taste good raw?

“Okay,” Sam says, skipping the newfound culinary questions. “So, how do the flippers work? With the pelt and the—” he gestures with the knife “—all of the rest of you, where do the extra flippers go?”

Bucky shakes the excess water off and dumps the green beans and okra into the bowl with the carrots. “Not sure I follow. They go on the pelt. Or on me.”

Sam frowns. There’d been two flippers on the pelt in the arctic. He could see it if there was a flipper missing, since there’s an arm missing. But four flippers minus one flipper does not equal two flippers.

“A selkie pelt can take a lot of different shapes, Sam. It can be all flattened out and pretty big, or it can look like a jacket, let’s say. Or a fur coat. Or a dress. Or kilt, back in the day.” He shrugs and picks a green bean out of the bowl to twirl between his fingers. “I could bundle it up to look like a pillow or a folded towel. There’s options.”

“Okay, sure.” Sam resumes slicing up the pepper. “What happens to the flippers, though? You wouldn’t wear a jacket that had a pair of flippers wagging around in the back.” If only because it would probably be a neon sign saying “selkie here.”

“They’d go on the inside, really small and flat. Like pockets.” He mimes pulling the green bean out of an inside jacket pocket, and then eats it. “You can always tell a whole selkie pelt for what it is, no matter the shape or size, by looking for the flippers. They’ll be there, somewhere.”

Sam transfers pepper slices and celery sticks to the bowl. “Yours had two. And I’m pretty sure seals come with four.”

Bucky shrugs. “Mine had four, before.”

Before losing an arm or before diving to save him, either way, it seems like the current magic number should be three.

“So where was the third one? And when did it… you know.” He makes a poof gesture with his fingers spreading.

“Oh. You can put the flippers anywhere. I overlap my hind flippers, one on top of the other, held close together kind of like they’d be if I were a seal. And I would have done that with the other two, but, well, one went missing.” 

Bucky grins. “I packed up a pelt with four flippers,” he says before Sam can respond. “Slipped it on. It realized there wasn’t a left arm to shift, so it dropped that flipper. Now my pelt has three.”

Sam hopes that wasn’t like losing the arm an extra time. Between the fall in the ‘40s, whatever amputational adventures were involved in getting set up with the arm that stole his steering wheel, and ripping off that arm to go for a swim, Bucky’s gotta be sick of losing the thing.

“You, uh…” Bucky looks over his shoulder toward his bedroom, a bit hesitantly. “You want to see for yourself?”

Yes. Sam absolutely wants to see for himself. Wants to run his hands along it, wants to wrap himself up in it, wants to trace a finger along the flippers and breathe in the faintly salty musk of it.

Not because he doesn’t trust or he disbelieves, and not even because he doesn’t understand what Bucky’s telling him, but because Bucky’s pelt felt so… What? Almost intimate. 

And not just because it was warm and safe and Sam would otherwise have been dying. Or just because there’d been some very skin-on-skin mutual exploration under that pelt. Or even just because the pelt _was_ Bucky somehow wrapping him in much more than a warm embrace.

No, that pelt had just felt, well, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. It wasn’t just Bucky. The pelt had been tangible trust, had been all of Bucky’s vulnerability out in the open, displayed for the taking, and— 

And that’s why Sam shakes his head. 

“No,” he says, watching the subtle sag of relief in Bucky’s shoulders. “I don’t need proof or anything. I only want to see your pelt if you want me to see it. Same for touching it. Otherwise it stays wherever you hid it, and that’s fine by me.”

Shit, that’s probably what Bucky’s been doing after ops, too. Stashing his pelt somewhere as a safety measure, even though no one but Steve even knew there was a weak point to go looking for. Even though JARVIS wouldn’t let anyone into this suite without permission. Even though his is the only suite on the floor. 

Hell, it might be _why_ his is the only suite on the floor.

Sam reaches out and touches Bucky’s arm. “Look, I definitely need to see you with flippers someday, Barnes, but not because I don’t believe you or think you owe me anything. I just want to see you flop around and honk, or whatever seals do on land. But later. You don’t even have two arms right now, and we’re both tired. I can wait.”

Bucky smiles, and draws Sam into a one-armed hug from behind. “Aw, jeez, doll,” he says soft and warm into Sam’s neck. “You’re a goddamn miracle, Sammy. Saw my pelt, touched my pelt, held onto my pelt, even, and you’re still not affected by it.”

Sam has no idea what he’s talking about, but he’s not going to protest the warm tickle of Bucky’s breath against his skin or the way Bucky’s right arm winds around his waist.

“I’m so fucking lucky. This never—” Bucky shakes his head, just a minimal movement that more rubs his nose into Sam’s neck than anything else. “I mean, first Steve, then you. And neither of you getting caught up. It’s unheard of.”

Sam’s getting a bit of an idea now what Bucky’s talking about. The damn fishermen again. Bucky’s a hot water bottle of a man even with legs, but there’s still a bit of a chill dribbling up Sam’s spine despite the heat radiating from behind him. 

Because right now, he doesn’t particularly want to roll himself up in that pelt like a snuggly burrito, but when Bucky’d first made that hesitant offer… he kind of _had_. It had been fleeting, and Sam would have shoved it down even if it hadn’t been, because no amount of yearning curiosity was worth another’s distress. 

But he can imagine people with fewer scruples or meaner motives getting, as Bucky had put it, “caught up.” All the more reason to leave the pelt hidden away. 

He doesn’t doubt himself or his morals or his self-control, but if there’s some kind of “my precious” magic mojo afoot, he doesn’t want to take any chances. Until a day ago, magic wasn’t even real. He hasn’t got the slightest idea how to fight back against magic-induced pelt greed.

He’d thought, back a week ago, that if he ended up succeeding and got to date Bucky instead of just working with him, then there’d be a whole different bundle of complicated issues to navigate. Steering wheel issues, brainwashing issues, PTSD on both sides going way back. 

Magically tempting seal skin was not on the list.

Sam pulls out six slices of bread and starts smearing peanut butter on them. They’re still going to eat something that will stick to their ribs, even if Bucky does have a whole garden of raw veggies on hand.

They enjoy a few minutes of companionable silence, standing back to front while Sam spreads peanut butter on bread and Bucky lightly runs his hand along Sam’s abdomen, sometimes seeming almost tempted to let his fingers drift further down, but always catching himself and settling for nuzzling into Sam’s neck instead. 

“You’ll tell me if I’m asking too many questions, right?” Sam turns his head to look at Bucky over his shoulder. “You’ll say, ‘jeez, doll, enough with the third degree’ or something.”

Bucky squints at him. “Wow, you do a terrible Bucky impression.” He kisses the side of Sam’s neck and grins. “Tell you what, why don’t you answer one of mine?”

Sam pauses mid-smear of peanut butter. Bucky has questions? That’s… Well, as far as Sam knows, there’s nothing nearly as interesting going on in his life as “I turn into a magical seal,” so he can’t imagine what sort of questions Bucky’s been holding onto for so long.

“Sure. Go ahead.”

Bucky slips away and goes to lean back against the counter, his remaining elbow neatly avoiding a peanut butter mess. “When did you first want to fly? You went into the Air Force, so you had to have already wanted to be up in the sky before they rigged up a wing suit and sent you on your way.”

Sam nods as he gathers up his thoughts. “There wasn’t really any one moment. It was lots of things, little things, and by the time they added up, it was like I’d just always wanted it.”

He swaps knife for banana and starts on the next part of the meal assembly. “I remember wanting to get away. Get above it all, all the unfairness everywhere. Get on top of the problem and you can fix it.” 

Bullies on the playground. Bullies in the teacher’s lounge. Bullies on the street corners. Bullies in the police stations. Bullies everywhere, on all sides. And every bully bullied in turn. Always someone higher up, and always keen on pushing everyone else down. But if he could just get above all that. He wouldn’t push people down—he’d reach out and lift them up. 

“I’d be on the swings,” he says, “pumping my legs as hard as I could to go higher and higher, and there’s a point, you know, where you get up past the top of the swing set, and you’re just floating there, weightless in the air, like you could take off, right before gravity hits and you come swinging back the other way.”

Bucky nods, smiling softly. His eyes are warm when Sam glances over, and they don’t leave Sam’s face when he continues.

“Or I’d be watching the birds.” Sam nudges the last banana slice onto the last piece of bread and closes each of the sandwiches. “Doesn’t matter if they were pigeons or crows or a hawk. You know they’ve got hawks in the cities now. Hardly anyone notices them.”

“No one looks up,” Bucky says quietly. “It’s real convenient in my line of work.” He stands straighter and leans in to kiss Sam’s cheek, wrapping his arm around Sam’s waist again like he can’t get enough, but facing him this time. “I can see _you_ as a kid, though, doll. Eyes on the sky, just itching to get up there.”

Sam feels his cheeks heat up, and he licks a bit of stray peanut butter off his thumb before embracing Bucky in turn. It’s nice, just standing here, arm in arm, loose enough to look into each other’s eyes, but so very close. 

“I used to have dreams where I’d go down the slide so fast I went soaring, or the see-saw would launch me up there.” Sam smiles. “And all the birds would welcome me to the clouds, and I’d learn all the tricks from them, how to swoop and how to climb, how to turn a perfect circle without moving a single feather…” 

He shakes his head. Damn, it’s been so long since he’s even thought about all this. “I could see everything,” he says. “It was so quiet and peaceful, the wind rushing by but it wasn’t cold. It was like swimming in the summer, almost, the way the air moved all around me, like it was moving and I was totally still.”

Bucky grins. “Scale of one to ten, how rude was the awakening when you finally got up there and found out it wasn’t nearly that warm or gentle?”

Sam laughs. “Man, I was so excited to just be up there, it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d expected an actual chorus of birds to greet me by name.” He shakes his head. “Nah, there was no such thing as disappointment. It was magic. Maybe not literally, but… You know.”

“Yeah, I know.” Bucky noses at the side of his face again and then plants a kiss at the corner of his jaw. “Was magic enough just hearing you talk about it. Seeing your eyes light up. You got some real pretty eyes, you know.”

If they go down this path now, standing in this little kitchenette, they’re never going to eat lunch. And it’s tempting. Damn, is it tempting. But his stomach makes a little gurgle and they both laugh.

“Make a mean peanut butter and banana sandwich, too,” Sam says. 

“Well, then we better get on that.” Bucky kisses him again, lips, then jawline, then neck. “Meet you on the sofa,” he murmurs against Sam’s skin.

* * *

There’s a beeping of an incoming call about halfway through their lunch, and Bucky absently mashes Accept with a celery stick. The call comes through on the TV screen.

“Bucky! Bu— Sam! God, you’re okay. You’re both okay.”

Steve’s looking and sounding a little more tense on the screen than Sam’d expected, and even his relief on seeing them alive and well is tempered with an undercurrent of concern.

“Yep.” Bucky exchanges his celery stick for a piece of his sandwich. “Better than okay. When you’re back from Vienna, you should stop over. Meet my boyfriend.” He nods over at Sam with a grin. “Think you’ll like him.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Hey Steve. How’s the op going?”

“Going fine. Um.” Steve looks between them and then puts on the casual demeanor that has probably never fooled a single human being in all the years it’s been tried. “You get unpacked okay, Buck? Get everything… put back where you can _find_ it again?”

What? How could Steve possibly think he’d just—

“Sam’s been read in. He’s cool.”

And with that, Steve finally relaxes. 

He looks at Sam apologetically. “I wasn’t worried about you, you know. I know you’d never trap him. It’s just that I didn’t know if he’d told you, so I didn’t want to spill the secret, and accidents happen all the time, to selkies.”

Steve winces. “Sometimes the flight crews just stow stuff without asking, and you were going after a HYDRA base, and… there’s just a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong. But not you stealing it.”

Sam feels that little thread of betrayed hurt snap and unravel. He’s not sure how anyone would manage to _accidentally_ force Bucky to selkie-marry them, but he can well imagine the worst-case scenarios running through Steve’s head.

“Thanks, man. You had me worried, for a sec, that you didn’t know me after all.” Sam dips a bell pepper strip in ranch and crunches down on it. “Glad you _do_.”

“Yeah. I know you, Sam. You’re a good man, through and through. Congrats on getting together,” Steve says, moving past the misunderstanding instead of letting it weigh things down. “Probably should have led with that. Sorry. My mind went bad places first.”

Bucky shakes his head. “No worries. You got it out there in the end.” He grins. “We make a cute couple, right? Tell us we make a cute couple.”

“The cutest, Buck. Now maybe you can stop waxing poetic about perfectly sculpted facial hair and potential beard burn every time we—”

“Okay, wow, no, stop! Stop!” Bucky waves his hand to shut Steve up, and it accomplishes exactly nothing.

“—get together to play old movies and—”

“Noooo!”

“Yes,” Sam chimes in with a gleeful grin. “Tell me more!”

Steve grins. “Oh, so you wanna hear all about how eating popcorn makes him think about—”

“No, Steve, no!” Bucky’s whole face is flushed, all the way down his neck, but he’s more than half laughing as he protests.

“Say it,” Sam insists. “Say it, Steve. What’s he want to do with popcorn?”

“Yeah, Buck.” Steve is innocence itself on the screen. “What do you want to do with popcorn?”

“I hate you,” Bucky mumbles from under his hand.

Steve laughs. “Sure you do, Buck. But someone’s got to do the equivalent of flipping through the baby photos on date night, right?”

There’s vague, wordless muttering from behind Bucky’s hand.

Sam pats him on the knee. “Hey, it’ll be my turn whenever we visit my family, promise.”

“I hate to do this,” Steve says, “but I’ve gotta get back to, you know. I just needed to check in after we got the report, see how you were, how you were doing. Glad you were both in one place. Saved me a second call.”

Bucky lowers his hand and smiles at the screen, his cheeks still flushed. “Go take care of shit, Stevie. We’re fine. Thanks for asking.”

“Yeah, man. Stay safe out there.”

Steve gives them a salute and disconnects.

“You’ll notice he never agreed to stay safe out there,” Bucky says. “Because he’s a punk like that. Thirty minutes from now, he’ll be juggling live grenades while tap dancing out of an airplane without a ‘chute.”

Sam hums in agreement, and then slides his eyes over to look at Bucky with a slow grin. “So tell me about the popcorn, Barnes.”

Bucky sighs and casts his gaze toward the ceiling. “It’s stupid. And gross. And impossible. I’m skilled, but not even my tongue can suck the popcorn kernels out of someone else’s teeth.”

“...wow.” Strictly professional relationship, his _ass_ . Bucky’d had it _bad_. Maybe even worse than _he’d_ had it. That mission was bound to get them together even without a trip through the ice.

“It was an exaggeration. Hyperbole. Like a ‘yo mama’ joke.” Bucky holds his right arm over his chest like he really wants to cross his arms but can’t. “You know, ‘I wanna french him so deep I hoover the popcorn out of his teeth.’ That kind of thing.”

Sam nudges Bucky’s foot with his own. “Well, you’re welcome to try. And by that, I mean, please do try. I’m looking _forward_ to that and I got plenty of popcorn back in my suite. You can keep frenching me until you get it right. Suck on all my teeth.”

“Yeah?” Bucky’s grin turns sly enough to heat Sam up from inside. “Gonna get it wedged in there tight?” he murmurs.

“You know it.” Sam shifts to move the plate they’ve been eating from onto the coffee table. “ _All_ the kernels,” he says. “Right between the molars. Gonna make you _work_ for it.”

Bucky traces Sam’s lips with a fingertip. “Do I get a couple practice rounds?”

“Only if you act fast. This offer’s only good for—”

And then Bucky’s kissing him, soft and slow and sweet, with his hand resting at the back of Sam’s head, applying only a suggestion of pressure, an invitation to follow as Bucky leans back into the sofa, angling them into a lengthwise sprawl of limbs. 

Sam lets himself be drawn forward over Bucky, matching him kiss for kiss and not caring in the slightest if his breathlessness takes on a wanton quality as his legs settle between Bucky’s.

Bucky swallows when Sam settles against him, holding his inner thighs flush against Sam’s hips in a brief squeeze. “This okay?”

Sam nods and smiles into another kiss, tangling a hand in Bucky’s hair and propping himself up with his other elbow.

It’s not just okay—it’s _good_. Getting some food certainly revived _him_ , and the way Bucky’s kissing on him, it looks—and yeah, _feels_ —like the refuel was mutually energizing. Could be a super soldier thing, could be a selkie thing, could just be a Bucky thing, but the man runs hot like a musclebound radiator, and Sam wants to melt right into him, rain check be damned.

And this _is_ good. _Really_ good. Great, even, what with Bucky worming his way further down the sofa to get them even more horizontal—and incidentally adding some friction to their kissing. Sam could happily occupy this sofa, this hot little pocket of space between Bucky’s knees, for the rest of the day. 

But… Given certain _pressing_ matters… 

Partway into their next kiss, Sam pulls back with a swipe of his tongue along Bucky’s lower lip. “Might be even better if we moved this to the bedroom,” he murmurs, his eyes moving from Bucky’s lips to his lashes and back.

“Yeah, doll?” Bucky asks, looking up through those lashes like he knows exactly what he’s doing. “You wanna help me out of these tac pants? Show me a good time?”

Does he ever. But he’s too busy catching his breath at the thought of reaching into those pants to get a response out.

“‘Cause I want you to,” Bucky purrs up at him. “Want to feel your weight on me. Want to feel you in me. Want everything about you. Everything you got, doll. Wanna eat you up.”

Sam shifts his weight a bit, and yeah, he can feel exactly how serious Bucky is about that—and getting more serious by the second. Sam’s feeling more than a little serious himself. If they’re moving this to the bedroom, there’s no time like the present.

“Well, then let’s get a move on, Barnes.” Sam presses himself up against Bucky with a grin. “You’ve got yourself quite a to-do list to get through.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Note: This is the chapter where a character is teased, but the teasing is meant well and taken well. All parties are happy and no bullying is occurring. ^_^ Also, impending shenanigans of the under-the-blanket variety are alluded to~


	3. Morning Ablutions

Sam listens to the water running in the bathroom, still not quite believing that he’s managed to wake up in Bucky’s bed after dreaming of the same for months. And dreaming of plenty of other things for months. And talking Steve’s ear off about it for months while begging him to keep quiet lest Bucky spook.

And hell, if Steve has been hearing all about this from Bucky, too, as the popcorn revelation would indicate, those months must have been agony for him. But Sam’ll give him this: Steve Rogers can’t tell a lie to save his soul, but he can omit a truth like no one’s business.

The water shuts off, and Sam debates briefly whether to pretend to be asleep so Bucky can wake him up, or to sit up in bed so he can catch the view on Bucky’s way out of the bathroom.

A few minutes later finds Sam leaning against the headboard, watching Bucky come back into the room naked and dripping and delicious. The missing arm is still a wince-inducing sight, with the metal shards curled inward like that, but all the rest of him that’s on display makes up for it.

“Well ain’t that a sight,” Sam says. He settles back against all the pillows and blankets—because his pelt is not the only incredibly soft thing Bucky surrounds himself with by far, apparently—to enjoy the show.

Bucky waggles his eyebrows. “I’m the one who should be saying that, doll. Looking at you in my bed, all wrapped up in my blankets like a present. I didn’t think you might have left, or anything, but it did cross my mind once or twice in there that I’d had a really good dream.”

He crosses over to give Sam a minty good morning kiss. “Morning, beautiful. I missed you in there.”

“Well all you had to do is wake me up.” 

It’s not too forward to suggest showering with the man he drilled into the mattress last night, though bathing together can be strangely more intimate than sleeping together. Still, everything is going so well that Sam can’t help but wonder when it falls apart, goes wrong, when _he_ wakes up.

“Next time, you bet your perfect ass I will, Sammy.”

Well that’s settled then. Perfect.

Bucky gives him another kiss and then grabs a pair of yoga pants from a drawer and starts shimmying into them with a one-armed technique that’s actually a lot smoother and more practiced than Sam would have anticipated, since the guy _has_ had a second arm to use most of his life.

“Want some help there?” Of course, if Sam helps, then those pants aren’t going on at all, unless they’re going “on” the floor.

Bucky runs his right hand around the waistband, tugging the pants straight and leaving his ass just as incredibly well-defined as usual. “I’m good, but thanks. The beauty of yoga pants is there are no buttons.”

Sam ogles him without pretense, letting his appreciation for the view show, finally, after nearly a year of having to do this all covertly lest his less than professional interest be discovered. “I’d say there’s at least one other beauty of yoga pants.”

“A beauty _in_ yoga pants, you mean. I’m fucking hot.”

“And so modest.”

“Modesty is for people with nothing to flaunt.”

Bucky reaches into a drawer further down to get a shirt, and the little shit makes sure it’s a slow, sinuous bend at the waist while he reaches, with a single, pointed clench of his ass before he unfolds into an upright stance like a fern uncoiling.

“Do I look like I need to be modest?” He smirks and loops the shirt over his head before worming his right arm into it and pulling it down over his torso.

“No, you do _not_." Sam wants to take those clothes off him again, right now, but he settles for enjoying the view with a grin.

Bucky laughs and ducks into the bathroom for a moment, emerging with a hairbrush. “Tie my hair back?”

“Sure.” Sam takes the hairbrush as Bucky approaches and sits on the edge of the bed with his back toward him. Another thing he doesn’t have to pretend he’s not enjoying, anymore. There are so many perks involved in falling through ice.

He’s seen Bucky brush his hair on overnight ops, the way he yanks a brush down his hair from root to tip, and he’s heard the way that brush rips through tangles on each pass, seen the way Steve winces in sympathy every time but keeps his objections to himself. 

Let Bucky be as rough with himself as he wants is the general rule of thumb, and Sam agrees to some extent—autonomy isn’t autonomy if there are externally imposed rules about how you do all those things you can now do for yourself.

But Sam doesn’t have to be rough at all now that the brush is in his hands, and he isn’t. There are hardly any tangles to work out, but he still starts at the bottom and works his way up, holding sections of hair to make sure nothing pulls too hard.

And yeah, sure, maybe he keeps brushing for a while after those few tangles are out. Maybe he runs his fingers through the strands alongside the brush. Maybe he indulges himself a little bit before slipping the hair tie off the brush handle and putting his big-brother experience to good use fashioning a smooth ponytail. 

So sue him.

How could he not, anyway, when Bucky sighs into his touches and his right shoulder visibly releases tension as he works?

Sam presses a kiss to the nape of Bucky’s neck, right at the hairline under the ponytail, and passes the brush back to him. “All set, Barnes.”

“Mm, thanks. You’re good at hair,” he murmurs.

“I got sisters. I’m good at hair in self-defense.” Sam glides his hands around Bucky’s waist and holds him there, pressing his cheek to Bucky’s back.

Bucky melts back against him, easy and loose, and his response comes in that same muzzily soft murmur as before, this time rumbling through his back as well. “Was probably good at hair, too, once. Before, you know.”

“Yeah, I bet you were.” It’s tempting to suggest he treat his own hair the way he would have treated his sister’s back in the day, but Sam trusts the sentiment is hanging in the air heavily enough it doesn’t need to be said.

“Wanna say thank you, but in a very unsisterly way.”

Oh does he, now? Well who is he to say no to that?

“Then you can do my hair again, ‘cause I’m counting on you grabbing a big old handful of it while I blow you senseless.”

Sam laughs and kisses the back of his neck again. “Do your worst with your ancient selkie knowledge, Barnes.”

“Told you,” Bucky says as he slides to the floor with an eager, heated grin, letting his right hand glide along the length of Sam’s bare leg. “This is all me, baby.”

Bucky plants a kiss just above the hinge of Sam’s knee and then licks a stripe up his inner thigh. “I’m a self-taught selkie when it comes to sucking a man off, and you’re the man I’ve had my eyes on for too long without putting my mouth on you, too.”

Sam swallows. “Well then get your mouth on me, already,” he breathes.

And oh, fuck, get his mouth on him, he _does._

* * *

Sam does have to brush out Bucky’s hair again after his very thorough and entirely un-familial thank-you, and he takes his time before putting it in another smooth-as-silk ponytail. For all he knows, the hair really is some kind of selkie thing. 

He stretches one more time, fingers reaching for the ceiling, before yawning. “Mind if I freshen up a bit before we head down to the labs?” He can’t imagine Bucky would mind, but you never know. People get weird about their bathrooms.

Bucky gives him a lopsided smile. “Yeah, sure.” He grabs a StarkTab e-reader from the nightstand and sinks into the cushy chair to the other side of the bed. 

“Make yourself at home, doll. Extra towels and things are in the cabinet if you want to shower and not just splash your face.”

Sam leans down to give him another kiss, relishing the traces of himself on Bucky’s lips, and heads to the bathroom to take him up on that offer. It’s been a decidedly sweaty night, between what all they got up to for hours and the fact that Bucky really is some sort of hot water bottle in human form.

Maybe the blubber is turned into heat when he’s in his human form and it radiates off him. Mass into energy, could work, those aren’t exactly the bits of physics he’s kept up with, though.

Sam discovers that “extra towels and things” is apparently selkie for “I secretly run a Bed, Bath and Beyond out of my bathroom.” 

The towels range from microfiber-soft to a terrycloth so rough Sam would sooner air dry in public than use it. And the soap. So much soap. All _kinds_ of different soap. And a little basket with red, white and blue woven around the rim, filled with assorted soaps and bottles. 

Huh.

“You’ve got patriotic soap, Barnes?” Sam digs through the basket a bit with one finger. Hand soap, face soap, body wash, mouthwash, toothpaste, hand lotion, body butter, aftershave… Sheesh.

“Oh, yeah,” Bucky calls from the reading chair. “Those are for Steve. They’re guaranteed normal.”

Sam raises an eyebrow at that, and then looks at the rest of that shelf with this new thought in mind. There’s a bottle of… Warhorse Equine Shampoo & Conditioner? Um, what? 

He picks up the bottle, half-sure the stylized red horse depicted on it is advertising. It seems like the kind of advertising Bucky would find hilarious enough to buy.

It’s not.

The back of the bottle very clearly states that “your horse will appreciate that we do NOT use heavy scents in this product.”

Sam brings the bottle to the door and gives it a wiggle to draw Bucky’s attention. “You have horse shampoo.” 

Bucky looks up from his StarkTab, and then tosses his head as if to flip his hair. “Because I’m worth it, Sam.”

“That’s L’Oréal Paris. Not L’il Corral Texas.” 

He shrugs. “It’s great when you’re filthy after a bad fight, like you’ve got engine grease in your hair and about a pint of blood caked on, all that.” He thumbs across the screen. “And I _do_ appreciate the lack of heavy scents in the product.”

“So you have a hair care arsenal about as diverse and plentiful as your regular arsenal.”

“With a few favorites, sure,” Bucky says. “But you probably want to use whatever’s in Steve’s basket. Safer that way. Not going to be any surprises in that basket.”

Sam shoots him a somewhat confused grin. “You got something hidden away in that bathroom of yours, Barnes?” Oh. Shit. What if it’s his pelt and they’re back on that?

“Hell yeah, I do.” 

But he doesn’t look shifty, embarrassed or even a little grumpy about it, so Sam figures it can’t be that bad. Not his pelt, at least. Maybe a toy or something.

“Oh yeah?” he asks, putting a teasing lilt to his tone to keep it light in case there really is something going on. He really needs to learn the new tells. He still counts himself an expert in Bucky’s normal tells, but the selkie ones, not so much yet.

“Hey, I selkie it up in there. I’ve got stuff in that shower you’ve never heard of. And probably can’t get without connections.”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “Is that so? Lionfish loofa, maybe a sea cucumber to bat around in the bath?”

Bucky laughs. “I’ve got skin care routines that might melt your face, Sam. Between the selkie thing and the serum thing, there’s not a lot of normal going on in there.” 

He nods toward the door. “Be my guest if you want to explore, doll, but do us both a favor and don’t actually use anything you don’t recognize.”

He’s serious. What the hell? Are there selkie soap-makers out there supplying the world’s magic seals with exotic bar soaps from the bottom of the ocean?

Sam enters the bathroom on a mission this time. He’s not just using the facilities, not just freshening up before a romp or washing up in the sink after, not just splashing his face with water. 

No, now he’s on a hunt. His quarry: whatever weird shit Bucky’s talking about.

One of the first things that greets him is a dainty little bottle of creamy pale blue hand lotion that catches his eye. The delicate hands on the label cup a plump cartoon loofa round enough to somehow be cute. 

He’s not sure what language that is on the front, but there is some incredibly fine-print English on the back near the bottom proclaiming it to be brisk, refreshing, and revitalizing. It also specifies that he should wet his hands and face with cool water before applying and suggests he finish pampering himself by draping a soft, chilled cloth over his face. 

So it’s not hand lotion, but some kind of moisturizing face cream.

Oddly specific while being oddly vague, but the stuff smells amazing when he uncaps the bottle. It’s like inhaling an early morning run along the beach with a faint whiff of salt on the air, and the sun just starting to peek over the waves to chase off the night’s chill.

“Yeah,” comes Bucky’s voice over his shoulder from the chair, “that’s definitely one of the smell-but-don’t-touch items in there.”

He looks down at the bottle again as Bucky gets up to come over. There is nothing at all about this that indicates it isn’t just an artisanal small-batch hipster spa lotion. Maybe the warnings are in the other language somewhere, but they aren’t anywhere in the English instructions.

“Lady hands holding a loofa isn’t very dangerous-looking,” he says. “And it smells really good.”

“That’s not a loofa, it’s a jellyfish. It’s cute.”

Sam looks at the little decal again. Once you take loofa off the possibilities list, the squiggly bit in her hands looks more like a Pac-Man ghost than a jellyfish, but he can kind of see it. “Is that their brand mascot or something?”

“It’s an accurate depiction of the contents.”

Sam’s head jerks up at that, and he stares at Bucky for a moment. “This is jellyfish lotion? That’s a _thing_ ?” Why is that a thing? Who _wants_ that as a thing? Who thought up this specific thing?

“Yep. Let’s call it medicinal. That’s how I use it, anyway.”

“Does it actually feel like jellyfish? Slimy pain?”

Bucky laughs. “It’s exactly like rubbing your skin with a jellyfish, right off the beach. One of the purple mohawk jellies.”

“The hell is a purple mohawk jelly?”

“You know. The ones that have that—” he mimes a sort of dumpling crescent shape “—crest thing that’s all purple and inflated, and they float around like a carpet of pain on the water.”

“Man-o-war. Portuguese man-o-war.” Sam recoils slightly from the bottle in his hand and hurriedly sets it on the counter. “Why would you put that on your _face_?” Medicinal, his ass. 

Bucky picks up the bottle and smiles at it fondly. “I don’t. I rub it into my shoulder. It helps with the scarring. Loosens shit up, helps with the pain on bad days. Gives it a focal point, you know? And when it wears off it takes the rest of the pain with it.” 

He puts the bottle up in the cabinet, then leans in to press his cheek against Sam’s. “Tell you what, though, you’ll only jerk off after using this stuff _one_ time.” Bucky holds up an index finger to illustrate his point. “It probably hurts less to fuck a handful of chopped jalapenos bareback,” he mutters.

Sam busts out laughing as the mental image of Bucky humping a gigantic jalapeno barges into his mind. “What the hell possessed you to use death lotion for lube?”

Bucky steps back. “Hey, it wasn’t intentional. Sometimes I just forget something hurts because I get used to it if it goes on hurting for long enough. So I didn’t even remember I still had it on my hand.”

Someday it will stop being jarring to hear Bucky casually drop things like that into a conversation. Today is not that day, but Sam’s still glad Bucky can be open about it.

“I was just… I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Finally feeling good with the shoulder all loose and thought I’d maybe feel even better getting myself off.”

Bucky’s lips pull into a half-grimace. “I did not, in fact, feel better.”

“Shocking,” Sam deadpans.

“Really more of a burning. I’m good at telling those two apart.” He grins. “Got lots of practice.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Okay, Mister Misery Champion, you got me. I walked into that one.”

“Right into it,” Bucky agrees with a laugh.

“‘Bout to walk myself right into this shower of yours, too, with something nice and safe from the basket of patriotic goodies.”

Bucky reaches for him again, running his hand along Sam’s shoulder. “You want some company?”

Yes. Yes he does. He has yet to see what exactly Bucky has to offer in a shower when there’s no pressing need to rush to a debrief and no audience. Something’s telling him it includes a good deal of personal attention. 

But while there might not be a pressing need to rush for a debrief, there probably isn’t enough time for whatever antics they might get up to. Not if they’re going to get to the lab for a teleconference with Stark.

“Going to take a rain check,” he finally answers. “But only because we have to be somewhere to see a guy about an arm.”

Bucky trails his fingers along Sam’s cheek. “Then can I watch?” 

Sam laughs and shoos him toward the door. “Incorrigible. Go read your book.”

Bucky gives him a brief kiss and mumbles something about “rather turn _your_ pages,” but does leave him to get ready for the day. Day two, or maybe three, because who can keep time zones straight when traveling between hemispheres by quinjet?

Whichever day it is, he’s got a feeling they’ll be cashing in that rain check before the week’s out.


	4. No Longer ‘Armless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that the Venom crossover fic is finished, this will be my Wednesday update. Having three different stories going at once just hadn't worked out. Two is manageable, though. ^_^

Sam eyes himself in Bucky’s mirror, freshly wiped clear of steam from his shower. He looks remarkably good for someone who nearly drowned in the arctic less than three whole days ago. 

_Must be all that selkie sex,_ he thinks as he opens a fresh toothbrush from the patriotic basket of harmless beauty products. _Bucky sucked the seawater right out of me._

Half a minute later, he stops brushing, the toothbrush hanging from one side of his mouth as it occurs to him. He stares. Must be all that selkie sex? That was a joke, but… he doesn’t really _know_ , does he?

Maybe that’s exactly what happened before he woke up in that poacher’s shack. Maybe it wasn’t just chest compressions and a bit of luck, but actively hoovering seawater out of him. And maybe… Maybe selkie sex _is_ healing. Shit. Maybe Bucky has some kind of actual magic healing cock, or maybe it’s his ass or his lips. 

He doesn’t actually know a single damn thing about any of this, not really. He knows Steve was worried about accidents. Accidents involving pelts and… Bucky said the fisherman’s wife thing was true, but now somehow people can capture a selkie by accident? What, like borrow a pelt and lose it?

Sam knows for damn sure he’s not stealing anyone’s pelt, but what if he accidentally does whatever Steve was worried had accidentally happened? How do you keep a selkie safe once you know what a selkie even is? Is it just carry on the same as before?

He makes himself finish brushing his teeth. No need to make Bucky worry he choked on the magic selkie toothpaste or anything.

The thing is, he can’t just carry on the same as before, and he doesn’t want to. And if the incredibly thorough ministrations of last night are any indication, neither does Bucky. Before is ages in the past and there’s no going back.

Now, Sam’s in this bathroom for longer than a quick piss before they head out for something or other. Now, Sam’s potentially wearing baggie t-shirts and borrowed boxers on overnight trips. Now, Sam’s curling up in silky selkie sheets and wrapping himself up in throws on the couch, and… 

And that kind of proximity could mean things like accidental pelt theft.

“You about ready, Sammy?” comes Bucky’s voice from the other side of the door. “Time, tides and Tonies wait for no man.”

Sam grins and shakes his head before opening the door. “Or selkie, am I right?”

“Or selkie.” 

Bucky pulls him close with his arm around Sam’s back and kisses him long and gentle, and maybe they’ll run late to this teleconference and maybe they’ll be on time, and at the moment, either way is fine by Sam.

Sam hums into the kiss and lets himself be drawn around until he’s pressing Bucky against the door frame, bringing his arms up between them to hold his face until the kiss ends far too soon and leaves him wanting more.

“Mm. Minty fresh.” Bucky licks Sam’s lips briefly, just a darting of his tongue, and then grins widely. “Care to escort me to certain doom?”

“It won’t be that bad,” Sam says, taking a reluctant step back and leading the way out of the bedroom. “If anything, he’ll be too interested in fixing that arm of yours to give you a hard time. You know he’s been itching for it to bust so he can get in there.”

“That’s exactly why it’s doom,” Bucky says. “On the one hand, he’s going to be too interested. The other hand is missing.”

Sam groans and playfully bats Bucky away when the man attempts to snuggle close in the elevator. “Only guys who don’t overuse hand jokes get to cuddle.”

“You didn’t mind my handiwork last night.”

“You were putting your mouth to better use last night.”

JARVIS brings them to a stop so gradual Sam almost misses it, and politely murmurs that they have arrived at the lab level.

“Thanks, JARVIS,” they say in unison, and then grin at each other.

It doesn’t take long for Bucky’s grin to turn brittle.

“Okay,” comes Stark’s voice from the screen on the wall, “so riddle me this, Bucky Bear: Why the arm?”

Not exactly the question Sam had expected when they came up for this long-distance mechanic session—he’d been planning more for _how_ the arm, as in “how did the arm get torn off?” and therefore “how are we putting a better one on?” 

But there’s hardly any time to think before Stark is half a sentence ahead of them.

“Wilson goes down, you go down after him, good. Great. Very heroic.” Stark salutes them. “But where you’re losing me is this whole business where you rip this magnificent beast off your shoulder in order to do that.”

He taps a stylus against the holographic representation of Bucky’s arm that’s floating by his side, and it rotates as though it were a physical arm on a swivel. The actual arm is settled on a stand Stark must have had designed for just such an occasion, because it fits beautifully. 

“I mean, what,” he continues, “the hole was too small to fit both your arms through, so you had to strip and also amputate your better arm? I don’t get it. You’re smart, and that’s dumb, so this is confusing me. Fill in the gap for me, Red Scare.”

Bucky’s smile doesn’t get any less brittle as he eyes his arm over to their right. It does become less of a smile and more of a grimace, though.

“Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about it, Tony,” Sam says as he takes a seat in one of the swivel chairs. “It doesn’t matter anyway. The arm got torn off—forget why and how—and you can put it back on or you can’t. Which is it?”

On the screen, Stark looks at him closely, then at Bucky standing at his shoulder, then back to him and once more to Bucky before settling on Sam. “You two hooked up. You got frisky in front of a fire and had a romantic hypothermic romp in the icicles.”

“So?” Bucky asks, his tone half challenge and half curiosity. 

“So congratulations!” Stark grins. “That was a long time _coming_. Ba-dum-tsh!”

“You’re not funny.” Sam doesn’t even give him the smile he’d give Bucky for a pun that bad.

Stark twirls his stylus. “I’m hilarious. But mazel tov. And it _does_ matter.”

“What?” How could it possibly matter that he and Bucky are starting a thing when it comes to this arm replacement? If this is some kind of joke setup… 

Bucky puts a hand on his shoulder. “It matters,” he says softly, “because having to tear my arm off every time _that_ happens is a design flaw that puts me out of commission when I might really need to be in fighting trim.”

“Ding ding ding! So why’d you tear your arm off, Buckster?”

Shit. That really does matter. That could be life or death for Bucky or for someone around him. Sam reaches up to rest a hand on Bucky’s, not needing to see his expression to know he’s feeling trapped—the way his hand tenses on his shoulder speaks loudly enough.

“…I just need you to make it detachable,” Bucky finally says. “I need for the part that stays connected to me to have smooth edges and not jut out anywhere.”

Stark studies him for a moment, then seems to come to some conclusion or other. “Fair enough.” 

He waves the arm hologram aside and brings up a diagram of Bucky’s shoulder instead, already doctored to match the damaged areas where the metal tore. “These work out okay for you, or you need something more concave?”

Bucky sags slightly in relief behind him, and Sam wonders at how tense he’s got to have been this whole time for the change to be that noticeable. When did he start tensing up? Was it really that gradual that he didn’t notice earlier, or was he never as loose and carefree as Sam had thought earlier?

“…More concave would be… It’d be great.”

“I can hook you up. Check out the scans, see what’s underneath, get a good look at the hardware all up in your torso, poke around at the connections…” Stark trails off with his eyes bright and full of inspiration, and then he sobers up. “Installation’s probably going to suck, no lie, but you’re used to worse, I figure.”

Bucky nods and pulls up a stool to perch on beside Sam. “I’m used to worse, yeah. But… it would be… It’d be worth it to have it done right.”

Stark taps his stylus against the holographic metal bits again. “So these leftovers—get it? _left_ overs?—weren’t an issue for you, means it’s not about heat loss to the metal while skinny dipping in the arctic. Scratch that theory.” He squints at them from the screen. “I’ll get it.”

“You could also drop it,” Sam mutters. Sometimes the benefits only barely outweigh the annoyances when working on improvements to his wings, but this is an arm that goes all the way inside. It’s different.

“I really, really can’t. Don’t work that way, never have. It’s a puzzle. I love those. Can’t wait to see the big picture once I line up all the pieces. Even better in real life ‘cause there’s no box to—”

“When do we do the scans?” Bucky asks, sounding at once like he can’t wait to start and wants to put them off forever.

“Already done ‘em while we’re talking. Give me a day or five to get everything assembled, fly back in from Malibu, all that. Mise en place, you know. Like fancy cooking. This’ll suck, so better to get it all over with in one big horrible go, right? Instead of pausing to measure out spices or chop up veggies mid-recipe.”

“Wait. So we’re done here today?”

“We’re done here today.”

“Thanks,” Bucky says. “That was so much quicker than I thought it would be.” He slides off the stool and rolls his right shoulder back. “I’m not going anywhere, so just, whenever you’re set up… For the installation. Thanks.”

“Homing device.” Stark points the stylus at Bucky. “Leave the arm behind so you can sense where the opening is for getting back out from under all the—” He waves his hand to dismiss the idea. “No, no, no, that’s not going to work. I’ll get it, I will.”

Bucky’s jaw clenches briefly and Sam could swear he hears teeth grinding together. “Thanks.”

* * *

“He’s not going to get it, you know,” Sam says over breakfast for one some four days later. He was going to skip breakfast today out of solidarity, but Bucky’d insisted. 

Apparently, even if Bucky can’t eat before the procedure in case something goes wrong and they _do_ have to drug him, Sam won’t go hungry on his account. It was all he could do to convince Bucky to let him feed himself instead of sitting through a dozen more “hand” puns.

“You think?” Bucky asks, looking honestly unsure and scooting closer to him on the sofa.

“He’s _not_ ,” Sam insists. 

He spreads some jam on his english muffin, keeping the plate balanced despite Bucky’s shifting. Maybe today it would have been worth the horrible puns to give Bucky something constructive to do while they got ready for this thing.

“Stark’s thinking machinery,” Sam says. “Electronics, hard science. Maybe science fiction at the outside.” And that’s true enough, isn’t it? Stark is all things science, and selkies… aren’t.

“The truth is more folklore and mythology than anything else. Fairy tales come to life.” Sam shakes his head and leans forward to put the jam jar back on the coffee table. “He’s not going to get it.” 

He takes a bite while Bucky makes muffled, sad-selkie noises into his shoulder. They sound remarkably like the muffled, sad-super-soldier noises Steve had made into an ineffective stiff drink when they hit one too many dead ends in the search for Bucky after the helicarriers had fallen. 

Maybe it’s a muffled, sad-Brooklynite noise. From a century ago.

“Look,” Sam says once he’s finished his english muffin. “That guy probably skipped fairy tales and went straight from See Spot Run to Baby’s First Astrophysics Compendium with Bonus String Theory Appendices.”

Bucky huffs a laugh against his neck. “Sure, Sammy-doll.” 

“You want to postpone this?” he asks, keeping his voice soft. “Until Steve can be here?”

Bucky shakes his head, which results in him nuzzling closer into the crook of Sam’s neck. “Tired of being ‘armless,” he mumbles. “Anyway, Steve can’t do anything about it that you can’t.”

Well, maybe Steve can avoid having his hand shattered by Bucky’s death grip if it comes to hand-holding during the attachment process. That’s something Sam’s not sure he can do with his unenhanced, entirely human phalanges.

“I’ll be there the whole time,” he says instead. “Not going anywhere.”

“Gonna keep me warm after? Make sure I don’t get hypothermia?”

“Barnes, you run so hot there’s a good chance HYDRA put your ass in deep storage just to keep the A/C bills down in summer.” 

“It’s all my magic blubber,” Bucky mumbles back with a smile Sam can feel against his neck.

“Well then let’s get your blubbery ass up to the lab so we can hurry up with the rescue spooning after.”

“You boys are all the same. Just wanna get in my pelt.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “I swear, your terrible jokes are going to kill this relationship before it’s even out of the cradle and wobbling around on two feet.”

“I’m an assassin; what do you expect?”

* * *

What Sam does _not_ expect is for Stark to greet them with The Answer.

Whatever time the man’s spent working on assorted internal and external mechanics and wiring, he’s clearly also spent noodling over the question of why Bucky needed to go down an arm in order to go down and rescue him.

“You’re a selkie!” 

Stark greets them with a big grin that only gets bigger when he sees the reaction—Bucky goes even stiffer than he’d been at the start when all he was facing down was a lab full of equipment set up to dig out the rest of the old arm and install the new one.

Sam shifts into a defensive stance, ready to do… he’s not sure what. Maybe just crack the joking response Bucky seems suddenly incapable of despite that being his go-to method of dodging all manner of things he’s not ready to discuss.

“Ah-hah!” Stark crows. “I got it! You _are_ a—” He frowns. “Except how is that even a thing, I thought for sure you’d laugh. Was going to be part of the routine. Huh. Oh well.” 

He shrugs and gives the stool next to him a pat. “Hop on up, Robocop.”

“That’s it?” Bucky warily approaches. “Just, ‘hop on up?’”

Stark waves off the concern. “Eh, it’s not like that’s the weirdest thing I’ve encountered. You’re like if Thor was from Earth. Strange encounters of the next door kind.”

After another few moments of hesitation and a shared look of confusion with Sam at Stark’s blasé acceptance of the supernatural, Bucky gets on the stool. “Sam’s staying,” he says.

“I am, yeah. You got another stool I can grab, Stark?” 

He doesn’t wait for the inevitable nod toward one of the other stools before dragging it over. He might not know how the hell Stark of all people came up with the fairy tale answer—and why he didn’t go along the lines of werewolf before selkie—but he does know he’s got some damage control to do where it comes to keeping his boyfriend calm.

What was supposed to be a stressful couple of hours with the prospect of medical attention if something unexpected went wrong has just gotten a hell of a lot _more_ stressful. There might as well be white coats and needles in the room already. 

Luckily, there _is_ a boyfriend in the room already. Sam sits right up against Bucky’s right side and wraps an arm around his middle. Time for welcome-personal-space-invasion round two, revenge of the Sam. “I got you. Ain’t going anywhere.”

Damn, he’s tense. Sam had thought it was hard to believe this musclebound super soldier turned into a squishy seal _before,_ but now… Well, it’s even harder to imagine a layer of blubber anywhere. Does he just turn into a beefy seal instead of a squishy one? Are there even beefy seals?

Stark natters away as he works, drilling out some of the pieces that’ll come off without a struggle and dragging the others out with effort and tools that leave Bucky gritting his teeth and grabbing at Sam’s forearm. Most of the chatter is easily ignored, but then about an hour in:

“So do I need to build you a special swimming pool, Sea Doggo?”

Bucky frowns. “…No?” 

He eyes Stark for the first time since the man started, turning his head to look at him straight on. “Why… would you need to build me a special swimming pool? You’ve _seen_ me use the regular swimming pool. I do fine.”

Stark tugs out a bit of wire with a sympathetic wince. “Yeah, but if you’re going to get your seal on, the current swimming facilities are kind of public access.” The wire gets dropped in the pile with the rest, and the pliers are exchanged once more for the drill.

“ _I_ can keep a secret,” Stark continues. “Wilson here can keep a secret. Shockingly, Captain Forthcoming Earnestness can keep a _hell_ of a secret, even in a war zone with Daddy Dearest and a whole band of brothers living in his very tight, spangled, back pocket.”

Stark studies the inner workings of what’s left of Bucky’s shoulder and then sets the drill down without using it, seemingly satisfied with whatever he’s seen. “You think Brenda from Accounting is going to see a big fat seal in the swimming pool and _not_ tell Ted from Purchasing over bagels in the break room?” he asks. 

Sam knows this is both Stark’s natural state and also a ploy to ensure that as little about this procedure as possible harkens back to prior instances of the same. That he’s making an educated guess that all the other times Bucky’s had science types digging and poking at him, those guys weren’t joking around with him and using stupid nicknames. 

Or at least, that if they were, they were doing it in a dickish, dehumanizing way entirely unlike this. 

And it’s maybe working. At least, Bucky didn’t seem to get lost in memories of other arm-related repairs and didn’t come close to decking Stark even once. But Bucky also didn’t take part in the banter with Stark the way he would with Sam, Steve, Natasha, or even Clint. He’s not even making jokes about the miserable things that have happened in the past. 

All the same, Stark doesn’t give up on a strategy that easily.

“Headlines’ll be fun,” he adds. “‘Avengers enter the black market exotic pet trade!’ Or how about ‘Avengers Tower: New York’s newest aquatic petting zoo?’”

He looks at Bucky, then at Bucky’s shoulder, then at the replacement arm, and makes a minor adjustment to some fitting or other. “Hey, Kiss from a Rose, go ahead and pretend you’re reaching up with what’s left—ha!—of your magnificent metal masterpiece.”

Sam shakes his head. “Such an asshole, Stark.” 

Bucky obligingly shifts on his stool, though the bits that are still in place are all so internal that Sam can’t see anything from where he’s sitting. His grip on Sam’s forearm twitches, though, so something’s happening when he does that, and it doesn’t feel great.

“Squishy Boi doesn’t mind, do you?”

Bucky rouses himself again, but still only to a mumble. “I’ll mind it a whole lot if it leaves the room.”

“Hasn’t left it yet, isn’t gonna. Roll your shoulders for me. Both of ‘em.” There’s a pause as that happens, but it’s a short one. “So that’s a yes that we’re keeping the whole ‘I’m a squishy magic seal’ thing under wraps.”

“I—” Bucky gasps as Stark slots the new arm into place without so much as a twitch of warning, and then slowly releases Sam’s forearm for the first time since Sam sat down. “…Yeah. And I was doing pretty good until your ice thickness reader glitched.”

Sam smiles, finally relaxing a little himself. It’s not a joke, but Bucky’s at least showing some of his true colors again, so whatever strategy Stark’s been deploying to put Bucky at ease—namely, being a jumpy, chattering asshole—should at least work for the parts of this procedure that don’t include digging around in a very mechanical but still very open wound.

“For what it’s worth,” Stark says as he starts connecting things to other things along the length of the arm, “we both know there wasn’t a glitch. It was just a hole. Probably something your squishy, fish-eating cousins dug out for breathing access.” 

“Don’t have any cousins in the area,” Bucky mutters, which might be true and might be a bald-faced lie, but it’s at least a response. 

And there are a few more responses peppered in among Stark’s nattering over the course of an hour or so, each a little less surly and a little more wry, despite most of Stark’s non-procedural statements being some brand of crass reference to selkies and seals and fish.

“Are you _sure_ you can keep a secret, Stark?” Sam asks as he watches Stark remove the devices he’d attached to the arm, apparently satisfied with his readings and the arm’s connections to the rest of Bucky. 

“‘Course I can. I’m—”

“Your mouth is the Usain Bolt of themed in-jokes,” Sam interrupts, because that’s the only way he’s going to get to speak. “And it’s itching to break its own speed record. I don’t think you’ve said much of anything that wasn’t directly related to the secret you’re thinking you can keep.”

Stark grins at him and finishes his own thought. “Getting it out of my system. Captive audience and all that.” He claps Bucky on the shoulder. “Okay, SeaWorld, give that a spin for a few weeks and let me know about that pool! I’ve got a beach ball with your name on it.”


	5. Elbow Room

What Stark actually has is a not a beach ball but a set of weighted balls for testing manual dexterity to ensure that the new arm functions like the old one—better than, actually, because the man would never be satisfied with merely “as good as.” 

And they don’t have Bucky’s name on them.

Sam eventually decamps to his own rooms, leaving Bucky to sort out some physical therapy exercises and then get some peace and quiet. It’s been a stressful few days leading up to the arm-swapping, a stressful swap, and still stressful afterward with the fear of yet another person knowing his secret.

He figures even Bucky could use the alone time to verify just how okay he is with all this change.

And he could use some alone time, too, to figure out just want it means to be in a relationship with a selkie now that he knows the cardinal rule of selkies: take a pelt, get a spouse. 

Even if it was just Bucky, the before-he-knew-about-selkies edition, Sam might need a moment to process the utter and complete success of his mission, despite the whole bit where he fell into an icy ocean and nearly died.

Fuck. He nearly died.

It’s not like it’ll be on the news or anything, but he still ought to tell his family. It’ll make a great “how we got together” story… Except he’ll have to leave out the part where Bucky took his clothes off, ripped his _arm_ off, _turned into a seal,_ and then took _that_ skin off to nurse him back to health with some ancient selkie sex magic. 

…Maybe he _shouldn’t_ tell his family.

Maybe he’ll just tell them that he finally hooked up with that coworker and is a happy boyfriend instead of a pathetic piner. Yeah. He can tell them that. And Sarah can finally get off his case about putting the moves on Bucky.

Sam looks around his suite, which seems incredibly empty now that he’s been elbow-to-elbow—and situation to situation—with Bucky for a few days. It definitely looks like he was busily stuffing things into a bag for this last op, but that’s what happened, so it’s not so bad.

He dials up his sister.

“Sam!” she says before he even gets a word in. “You’re back from your mission—how was the ski lodge? I _assume_ you’re calling to introduce me to this Barnes you’ve finally wooed over steaming cups of hot chocolate?”

Sam laughs. “Close.”

“Only close? He’s off somewhere else? Samuel Thomas Wilson, are you hiding him from me?”

Sam grins and settles into one corner of his sofa. “Only Mom gets to use the full name, Ra-ra. You’re _a_ mom, but not _our_ mom.”

“The point still stands. Where is this mysterious Barnes?”

“He’s working on some dexterity challenges, Sarah.” Sam cuts off her inevitable teasing reply. “There was an incident. We’re both fine now, but he lost that metal arm and had to get it replaced.”

There’s a beat of silence on the other end. “Oh my god, is he okay?”

“I just said we were both fi—”

“You don’t lose an arm and come back just fine, Sam. How did that happen? Can you tell me? You probably can’t even tell me because everything is top secret with you these days.”

She’s got a point, and he really wishes she didn’t. He shifts to pull his feet up onto the sofa with him and drags down the throw on the back to curl up in. It’s nowhere near as soft or warm as Bucky’s pelt, and he tries to get the pelt out of his mind.

He is not a pelt envier, there will be no thieving going on. If Bucky is going to marry him, it’ll be fair and square and intentional, not a magic oopsie. Anyway, it’s too early to think about marriage. He’s only just wooed the man by nearly dying on him.

“We got back a few days ago,” he says. “The mission was a total bust, and we both needed some time to get back to being okay. I only waited to call because I didn’t want to worry anyone.”

Well, and because he was busy under the sheets with his new boyfriend and couldn’t spare a moment for the second degree. But—

“But you’re okay now. Were you injured, too?”

“Only a little. Barnes dove in and fished me out before I froze to death.” He can say that much. That’s not too much to say, surely.

“Oh my god, you cuddled for warmth, that’s so fucking romantic!” Sarah says, then covers the phone if the muffled quality of the next words is any indication. “Jason, they cuddled for warmth on their mission and it worked!”

Sam can barely make out the “good for them” response and rolls his eyes. He’s going to get grilled next time he’s home, and it’ll be all he can do to make up some Stark-designed warmth-generating blanket that Bucky had in his pack that saved them both.

But his sister’s excitement—and her husband’s typical low-key agreement—make him feel warm and happy inside all the same.

“So how’re the kids?”

“Nope!” Sarah says. “Not a chance. Back to you. You have a boyfriend now, tell me all about him. Everything that’s not superheroic super secrets. Spill. Those. Beans.”

Sam sighs. “Okay, so you know back in D.C., the thing with the helicarriers?”

“Already been here. I know who he is, Sam. I want to know what he’s _like_.”

“Great?”

Now it’s her turn to sigh, and she does so gustily. “You’d better bring him home for Thanksgiving this year. I’ll never forgive you if you don’t.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll think about it. He’s really private, though. Only a few of us have even shared a meal with him post-op. Not sure how he’ll do when the whole clan is gathered.”

Or when he discovers the family business and all that potentially free seafood. Or when the family business discovers a pilfering seal in the harbor.

And now there’s _that_ huge secret to keep beyond even “he used to kill people when he was brainwashed” and “he was in WWII with Steve Rogers.” There’s even more of a question mark when it comes to bringing him home.

What if he packs his pelt? That’s a lot of people to keep it safe from who don’t even know it’s not a fancy blanket. What if he doesn’t? Will he be worrying the whole time about it back here in the Tower? He took it on their mission, so… has he taken it on others?

“Hello-o~? Earth to Sam?”

“Yeah, sorry, was lost in thought. What was that?”

“Lost in thought, sure. That’s what they call it these days, when you’re mooning over your honey-bun and—”

Sam laughs. “Was just imagining how complicated it would be to pack luggage for a family visit when he’s never done that in his life. There’ll be half a dozen grenades in there, for ‘just in case,’ if I don’t catch them first.”

She doesn’t join him in the laugh, though. Instead, her voice is a little sad over the phone. “You bring him, Sam. And whoever else in that Tower you’re holed up with in who hasn’t ever visited family. You hear?”

He swallows. “Yeah,” he says sobering up. “I hear. Love you Ra-ra.”

“Love you, too, Sammy.”

* * *

Sam swings by Bucky’s rooms on his way to the communal kitchen a bit later. He’d been planning to see if anyone was cooking, but Bucky’s always hungry, same as Steve, so there might be a chance of heading out to eat somewhere. There’s a new Thai place around the corner a few blocks down.

And hey, if he happens to bring a little bag with some toiletries guaranteed to contain no jellyfish, who’s to say he wasn’t planning to put that with his mission kit that got left up there? It’s not like he’s got any intention of moving in or anything… 

JARVIS lets him in without even being asked, which is probably the ultimate sign of having made it in the boyfriend department where Bucky is concerned, and forget the toothbrush.

There’s some sort of Swedish death techno complete with hoarse whisper-screams coming from the bedroom, and no sign of Bucky in the sitting area or kitchenette. Maybe he’s dancing, or something, celebrating the whole “two hands” bit with a bit of solo mosh pit action.

Sam’s seen stranger.

The sight that greets him when rounds the sofa and comes to the door, however, is not a dancing Bucky, but an incredibly cute butt without even a pair of threadbare yoga pants stretched over it.

“Well, hello there,” Sam says over the music after an awkward and hopefully private what-the-fuck moment in the doorway, because what else is a guy supposed to do? Ignore the butt? When it’s right there to be looked at?

“Hey, Sammy.” Bucky, owner of the butt, obviously—Sam _can_ strings thoughts together, he swears—looks over his shoulder with a nod in greeting and then tosses a ratty t-shirt into a pile of the same that’s been formed from the overflow of a trash bin.

He reaches over and turns the music off, and then it’s back into the dresser for more shirts.

Spring cleaning? Wardrobe overhaul? In the nude? Is this a selkie tradition he’s been heretofore sheltered from? What _even_ —

Sam braces himself for an answer he’s bound to be surprised by, and then asks the one question that can sum all of his questions up. “Why?”

Bucky hurls another pair of shirts into the pile and straightens from where he’s been digging around in his dresser. “It’s laundry day?”

That is _not_ the answer, and Sam knows it.

“Uh-huh.” Sam crosses his arms and leans against the door frame. “Wanna try that again?”

Bucky sighs, and starts moving more yoga pants than Sam had suspected he owned from two different drawers into the one he’s just emptied. “I’m cleaning up,” he says, semi-defensive about it.

But _not,_ Sam notes, defensive in the slightest about the fact that he’s swinging free as the day he was born. Or maybe not the day he was born, given that he was born as a seal, but still. Swinging very, very free. It’s nice to look at. Sam’s not complaining.

“Consolidating,” Bucky adds, giving one last pair of yoga pants a vicious poke until it concedes defeat and allows the drawer to close. “You know. Making space.”

Doesn’t answer the naked question, but Sam’s getting used to the view now that he’s had a bit of time to move from shock to appreciation, so he’s going to leave that one there for now. The muscles of him, planes and curves both, more than distract from the twisted scars along his shoulder.

Sam scans the rest of the room. It looks like there’s actually a lot _less_ space now that everything’s spread out.

The piles of pillows that have no room on the bed and that Sam, who has spent a few nights in that bed by now, hasn’t yet even seen out before this. The stack of towels that seem to range from microfiber-soft to a terrycloth so rough Sam would air dry in public before using them. The soap. So much soap. All _kinds_ of different soap. 

That whole side of the room is a spa hoarder’s wet dream.

But there’s also the jackets spread out on the bed, most of them looking so similar that Sam figures he’d be excused if he had thought Bucky only owned two jackets total. 

And the socks. Lots of fuzzy socks, the kind that are so warm your feet start to sweat, unless you’re Bucky. Bucky really hates cold feet, and Sam had finally learned the reason just yesterday: Flippers, according to Bucky, aren’t well-insulated like the rest of a seal.

And there’s the books finally pulled out of all their assorted “just gonna set this down real quick and inevitably forget about it entirely” homes and piled up together. Sam hadn’t realized just how many paperbacks were squirreled away in here, bodice-rippers, zombie apocalypses, historical nonfiction, riddles and other brainteasers… Sure, he’d come across books poking out of weird places while visiting Bucky, but the volume of books is a surprise. 

It’s like the entire contents of the room got up and had a dance party, and then sorted themselves into piles. What had once been a homey, if eclectic, space was now one of those shops where everything is for sale but nothing is priced until you ask the ancient and mysterious shopkeeper.

“Making space for what?” he finally asks.

Bucky passes judgement on a pair of identical belts and then tosses one at the shirt pile before carefully coiling the survivor and nestling it into a drawer. “For—” He stops, gets a shifty look, and starts again. “You know, if you wanted to keep a toothbrush, or something. Maybe move a few clothes in.”

“You’re making space for _me_ ,” Sam says. “In case I want to move in.”

“Well not _move in_ -move in, just move a few things in. Some clothes, maybe. Not a lot of them. I’ve seen your wardrobe, and your clothes wouldn’t fit in here in the land of yoga pants and warm socks.”

Sam rolls his eyes. Right. As if Bucky wasn’t a total clothes horse with a variety of styles. 

“Speaking of,” Sam says, “where are _your_ yoga pants and warm socks right now? Not a complaint, the view’s great. Just curious.”

Bucky shrugs. “I’m getting used to—” he waggles his left shoulder “—how the new joint feels, I guess. Since I’ll usually be pretty naked when shifting, I want to feel how everything moves without the distraction of clothes.”

Sam can’t really bring himself to argue the point that pants wouldn’t impact the way his arm feels, particularly not when the view really is great. And hey, maybe Bucky’d like to explore how the new joint feels during other activities that usually involved little to no clothing… 

“Anyway,” Bucky says, his slightly shifty expression heating up, “thought you might be stopping over sometime, and…” He waggles his eyebrows. “Haven’t sexed you up with both arms, yet.”

Uh-huh. Looks like Stark’s new arm is a gift that will keep giving. No complaints from this quarter.


	6. Beachcombing for Bananas

Say what you will about Stark throwing money around, the island is gorgeous. Sam had gone for many a morning run along water back in DC, and he’d done some laps in Central Park that were fairly peaceful, too. 

But running along a pristine sandy beach before sunup with the hushed burble of surf rushing up the shore and slipping back out to sea, nothing on the agenda, not a boat in sight… It’s something new, and something well worth Bucky’s grumbling and the half-asleep grabby hands he’d had to extract himself from to get out here.

Steve had even deigned to keep to a human pace for a few of their laps up and down the shoreline—though only a few. Show off habits die hard, and Sam hadn’t even been expecting this much. 

After a pleasant half hour with the gradual buildup of heat in his calves from running on shifting sand, Sam slows from his jog to a walk and considers the beach in front of him. As the sky brightens, the tide slowly comes further and further up the beach, and the messiest of their tracks are getting smoothed out like he and Steve were never even there.

Sam squints as the sun finally tips over the horizon and a flash of brightness ripples across the waves. They’d only gotten in last night after dark, had only seen the view with a silver cast of moonlight over every surface. The warmer gold of the sun promises to make the place even prettier.

And the unspoken promise of a seal frolicking in those waves just as soon as said seal wakes his ass up brings a smile to Sam’s lips. 

No, Bucky hadn’t said he’d finally show off his seal form today. But the way he’d looked at the waves through their window last night, the way he’d kept the storm shutters open, the way he’d been bouncing on his toes a bit over dinner… Yeah. There’s no way he’s not at least going to go for a swim, even if not as a seal.

Bucky in swim trunks is not the fat and squishy seal that Sam has been promised, but if that’s all he gets on day one, that’s fine. They’ve got two whole weeks out here of recovery time for the both of them, signed off on and paperwork filed. Sam can be patient if he has to be.

Steve comes to a stop where they’ve left their water bottles and grabs his before joining Sam in a post-run cool down. “Two whole weeks, huh?” Steve uncaps his bottle. “Gotta say, I’m a little jealous.”

“There’s no rule saying you have to go back day after next.” Sam looks over at him. “I don’t mind if you stay the whole two weeks with us, and I’m betting Barnes doesn’t either.”

Sam more than deserves this vacation after getting near-drowned in the arctic, and Bucky does, too, what with the whole arm rip and replace ordeal. But that doesn’t put Steve any less in need of a break. Truth is, they’ve all been going hard the past few months.

And he’s not going to begrudge Steve some downtime with his oldest friend, even if Steve _didn’t_ need it. 

“It’s a nice thought, Sam.” Steve takes another swallow. “But Nat’s got a thing lined up. It’s been coming together for a while now, and I’d hate to bail on her.” 

Steve grins. “They need an earnest yet bumbling fiancé to distract her workaholic type A business mogul. I’ve got a Pinterest board full of wedding frou-frou I’m going to spam her with during meetings.”

“Who showed you Pinterest?” Sam asks. 

Steve gestures back toward the chalet. “Bucky. And you know, it’s actually a lot of fun. I’ve got an unironic board for food I want to try, movies I still need to watch, even one for pictures of clothing.”

Sam would put his money on Natasha for the foray into fashion. The results should prove interesting, though, in the long term. Death to dad pants.

“Well, have fun with that,” Sam says. “We’ll be having more fun out here in the middle of sunny nowhere.”

Steve laughs softly. “I bet you will. You looking forward to seeing him?”

 _As a seal_ , Steve doesn’t have to say. And yes. Sam has been having dreams about rounded blubber bombs with squishy faces and flapping flippers for days now. Almost since learning that “as a seal” really and honestly means “as an actual, real life seal.”

The pictures of seals doing something actually called a “banana” pose with their heads and flippers raised to make a pudgy banana shape on rocks and beaches have done nothing to chase those dreams away. 

“You’ve seen him do this, right?” Sam asks. “The seal thing?”

Steve lowers his water bottle with a lopsided smile and looks out at the sea as they walk. “Shift, no. Not as such. I’ve hung out with him when he’s a seal, though.”

Sam frowns. “What, he didn’t show you?” That level of stealth sealing, not even letting his best buddy from childhood see… Sam doesn’t want to wait _that_ long. 

“We were usually out on the docks, whichever section was abandoned at the time. Late at night.” Steve shrugs. “Bucky’d wrap his pelt around himself, drop off the dock, bob back up as a seal. I’d jump in and we’d swim around.”

Huh. So not secret from Steve, per se, just circumstances being what they were. Maybe he really is going to get to see the whole magical girl routine, with sparkles and rainbows and whatever else.

“We never had a shot at a sandy beach like this. Too many people around even if we’d had time for it.” Steve looks like he’s not sure how this beach is going to work out, and maybe also a little embarrassed.

“You think we should turn away or something when he does it?” Sam really doesn’t want to, but if this one of those deeply personal things and he and Bucky aren’t _there_ yet, then he’ll avert his eyes and… protect Bucky’s selkie modesty or whatever, though he’s not been the slightest bit modest about anything else.

“No,” Steve says, “not really. And seals go onto sandy beaches all the time, so it can’t be that uncomfortable scooting around in all this.” He bends to pick up a sand dollar and turns it over in his fingers. “I’m sure if it was going to be an issue, he’d have bitched about it.”

Sam clicks his tongue. “Language, Cap.”

“Aw, bite it,” Steve mutters with a little grin. “You know he’d have bitched a blue streak if he finally had a chance to just be himself without secrets—or without this one, anyway—and the accommodations weren’t right.”

“True enough.” Sam does know, yes. And Bucky’d had a lot to say about the accommodations last night, but “it’s right there, Sam,” “you can smell the sea,” “it’s so close I can feel it,” and “gonna quit and move out here” had featured prominently in his rant. Not a word about sand in unpleasant seal places. 

It occurs to him suddenly that he doesn’t know what the equivalent of “sand in unpleasant places” is on seal anatomy. Has he ever seen a picture of a seal that wasn’t… very streamlined? All the way down to the flippers? What nooks and crannies would sand even invade?

He drags his brain back away from speculation on the subject and gives his arms a stretch overhead. “Think I’m about ready to head on back, catch a shower before Sleeping Beauty drags himself out of bed.”

“Sounds good to me.” Steve snags Sam’s water bottle as they pass by it and holds it out. “Waffles or pancakes?”

“Waffles.” Sam takes the water bottle as they turn toward the chalet overlooking the ocean. “Definitely waffles.”

Yeah, a hot shower, some teasing good morning snuggles, some waffles, then maybe go for a swim… It’s going to be a good day.

* * *

Bucky _packed_ swim trunks. Sam knows he packed swim trunks. Two pairs, in fact, because he couldn’t decide between the red ones and the blue ones. 

But apparently packing swim trunks doesn’t mean he’s going to wear them. 

At the very least, it’s just the three of them out here, and the only thing he and Steve haven’t already seen is a magical seal transformation scenario. So if Bucky wants to forgo even a pair of flip-flops on the short but somewhat rocky jaunt down to the water, more power to him. 

It’s a better view for Sam, anyway. No complaints here unless he ends up having to haul Bucky back up the hillside with a turned ankle or something.

He’s got his pelt rolled up under an arm like a beach towel, a pair of flippers flopping gently at one end with each step. And his gait oscillates between purposeful striding—but not quite a naked version of his murder strut—and a giddy, wiggly half-skip.

It’s fucking adorable, and if he wasn’t holding his pelt, Sam would be tempted to catch some video of it for later. But you never know where footage could end up, and it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Stark might know—still no telling how he guessed it—but that doesn’t mean it’s time to take chances. 

Like this beach, for example. A private little island off a ways from, well, anywhere. And with a staff that only comes out by jet from some other little island when Stark is planning to be in the chalet. 

From what Sam could understand from his babbling, there’s some kind of technology installed that blots out satellite images, so no one will catch a random Google Earth pic of a seal in the middle of nowhere. 

No chances taken, indeed.

Sam more than half expects to return to the Tower in two weeks to find a private pool decked out in orca patterns to throw off any seal suspicions. Or maybe dolphins. Sharks. Something to make the random Sea Doggo and Fishstick sound less… Well, they’ll still sound ridiculous, but Stark’s been good about only using those nicknames in very private settings.

Another thing Sam more than half expects as they step into the knee-deep waves is the tremendous splash of Bucky crashing into the water as he flings himself down into a wave.

What he doesn’t expect is the sandy _thwump_ that follows or the massive lump of seal the receding wave reveals.

“Holy _shit!_ ” Sam yelps as he takes a few hurried steps back up the shore. “You’re _huge!_ ”

That is not what they have in zoos. That is not some pudgy little seal waiting for a nose boop or slapping its belly for fish all cute and wiggly. That is a behemoth at least ten feet long and as big around as three Buckies.

What the fuck. Where does it all come from?

Steve’s cackling behind him breaks the questionable magic of the moment, and Sam spins around to glare at him. “You _knew!_ You asshole! Warn a guy!”

“Language,” Steve says as he sets Bucky’s metal arm on a towel above the surf line. 

“Oh my god, was he always this big?” Sam watches Bucky roll around in the waves and flick water everywhere with his flippers. And he tries not to fixate on the mess of scar tissue where a missing flipper ought to go. “Or is he some kind of enhanced selkie now?”

Steve joins him in watching for a moment before speaking. “Bit of both?” He squints at the waves, where by now only a hint of Bucky can be seen by the splashes. “He was always massive, but he’s a little more streamlined, now?”

Sam frowns. “Streamlined is bad for seals, though, right? They’re supposed to be blubbery and round? And smaller?”

“Eh, I’m not sure. Different seals for different places, and all.” Steve shrugs. “I always thought he was mostly Weddell-looking.”

“He’s not ‘Weddell-looking’ now?” Sam asks, as though he knows what that even means, which he doesn’t. The tide keeps coming in as they stand there, up to their thighs now, and that perfect temperature that’s warm to swim in but cool compared to the sun starting to beat down.

“He’s a little darker on top,” Steve finally says. “And a little lighter along the belly. And he’s got more of a neck than before. But he’s still huge!” Steve laughs.

Sam looks out into the water well beyond where the waves are up at his waist and rippling beachward behind him, and can’t see any signs of Bucky. Not so much as a flipper.

So much for show and tell, but he can’t really blame the guy. How long did he go without “shifting” as Steve had called it before he’d done it to save him in the arctic? At least as long as he’s had that arm, and then all that time at war on top of that.

Let the man frolic.

For his part, he’s going to go set up his towel and the beach umbrella he’d brought, put on some sunscreen, and crack open a beer. Just as soon as he—

Sam shrieks as something sleek and slippery brushes against his legs, and then promptly loses his balance in the water and ends up spluttering to the surface swearing up a storm as Bucky—that asshole—blows some bubbles at him while slapping his right flipper against his belly just under the surface.

That’s not the kind of frolicking Sam meant.

“Oh yeah, he can be a real asshole as a seal, Sam!” Steve calls from further up the beach, where he’d retreated ahead of what Sam knows now to be Bucky’s inevitable prank.

“You’re an asshole, no matter what you look like,” Sam grumbles down at the water. “An asshole with sex appeal when you’ve got two legs, but still an asshole.”

Bucky blows more bubbles at him and moves between Sam and the beach. 

And maybe this is an apology that goes along the lines of “I am cute and happy and you are allowed to pet me,” so Sam goes ahead and does that. Bucky’s pelt is just as soft and beautifully patterned as before, but this time, instead of being fluffy and luxuriant, it’s slicked down and sleek. 

There’s a webwork of scarring where his left fore flipper should be, and a little bump, almost a nub but not protruding quite so much as that. Sam can imagine jagged metal cutting up through the skin there from the metal stump of an arm, and that’s got to have sucked. The smoother bits of the new arm’s connecting points leave a much more natural structure under the skin.

As a seal, Bucky seems to enjoy having him stroke the area, running his fingers along the contours of sleek blubber-padded fur and that bit of hardware underneath. Oddly, or perhaps not, Sam doesn’t get the same internal flood of warmth from stroking the pelt while Bucky inhabits it as he had in the arctic, when Bucky had shed it.

That’s probably for the best, anyway. If that almost covetous impulse to wrap himself up in the pelt and just hold onto it is some kind of magic pelt lust he’s going to have to put up with—not that he’d ever be tempted to act on the feeling—then he’d far rather have this sensation than that one.

Bucky opens his mouth wide in the water, and Sam gets a glimpse of way more teeth, and bigger ones, than he’d thought seals had. Clearly he needs to do some research on seals so he can tell what’s normal for a seal and what’s super-charged selkie magic.

Because as Steve said, different seals for different places. And if this is a Weddell seal with a few small differences… Yeah, his whole assumption about what seals are needs to be changed. Because this is like expecting a dolphin and getting an orca. 

He takes a few steps further away from shore as Bucky presses against him, butting his head—thankfully with his mouth closed—against Sam’s hips. If his asshole selkie boyfriend isn’t careful, he’s going to knock him over again.

Or maybe that’s the goal. 

As it turns out, that is not _quite_ the goal. The goal is to go for a swim without his snorkel or flippers, apparently. A swim that involves holding on for dear life to an outstretched right flipper—with a set of massive claws on it, what!?—while Bucky twirls them around at speeds far faster than a human is meant to swim.

It’s exhilarating. That special blend of pure bliss and pure terror, punctuated by breathers at the surface that are anything but calming because his heart’s racing too fast to bother calming down.

It is almost exactly like flying underwater, barrel rolls included.

And once, just once, it is exactly flying. Bucky takes them down further than before, gains enough speed that Sam worries he’ll lose his grip, and then launches them out of the top of a wave and into the sky. He flicks his right flipper once they breach the surface, and Sam… goes… flying.

He’s laughing so hard from the joy of it that he almost forgets to suck in some air and brace for hitting the water at the end of his arc through the air.

Bucky is waiting for him in the water, though, and guides him to the surface with plenty of time to breathe, holding them in place despite a bit of riptide current that seeks to drag them both back out to deeper water.

“That was amazing!” Sam says, spluttering and laughing as he wipes water from his eyes. He wishes they could truly communicate like this, or that he could read a seal’s expression to confirm that Bucky’s grinning at him and not just flashing some frankly terrifying teeth.

And as though he can read Sam’s mind—though if selkies could do that, Sam’s sure Bucky’d have bragged about his ancient selkie telepathy by now—Bucky tosses his head back to expose the slicked down fur at the base of his throat, and then shakes his head until the mouth extends open and the pelt seems to split almost like a zipper down his left side.

“Liked that, did you?” Bucky says with a thankfully human grin.

“Liked it? I _loved_ it!” 

He’s not sure he’s loving this half-and-half shift, where he’s holding onto a flipper on one side and yet the other side is metal and scar tissue and human skin with a pelt hanging down mid-shed like a slippery, mottled grey banana peel.

Maybe selkies _can_ be a sort of seal mermaid.

Bucky pulls him closer with his flipper—which has not stopped being weird yet—and gives him a brief kiss. The combination of hot man kissing him from the shoulder up and slick-smooth seal sliding against his legs under the waves is… 

“Okay, man, that’s weird,” Sam says with a bit of a chagrined smile. Hopefully it doesn’t come off as rude, or mean, or… anti-selkie in some way. He’s very into Bucky, but is he into seals? Is that going to be a thing? Is that more than he meant to bite off? 

“You’re still half a seal, at least.”

The response is laughter, which Sam figures is the best response he can hope for, and then Bucky licking his cheek. Because he’s a little shit even if he’s a massive seal from the shoulder down.

“Closer to three-quarters seal,” Bucky says with a grin, “but I get it.” 

Bucky nudges him beachward and then slips down into the water. When he comes back up, he’s back to one hundred percent massive seal and continues herding Sam against the riptide current until Sam gets his feet under himself and can walk up the shore without risk of getting sucked back out to sea.

Sam’s half expecting Bucky to retreat back into the surf for a while once he’s safely deposited him on shore, but instead there’s a tremendous amount of splashing and flopping as Bucky caterpillars his hulking, rippling mass up the shore beside him.

And _damn._ Damn, but he’s huge. In this form, it’s like there’s two or three of him, all smooshed together into a seal-looking sausage mottled with blotches and streaks, trailed with scar tissue along his missing flipper like he lost a run-in with a outboard motor and the propeller blades took his flipper clean off.

Bucky’s jaws alone could easily fit Sam’s whole head inside, and those teeth! The molars are like three-peaked mountains all lined up and ready to shred something way bigger than a fish, and the canines are enough to make Sam wonder about vampires.

Even the flippers—the three he’s still got, anyway—are tipped with some claws that Sam just never quite expected a seal to have. What’s he going to do with claws, anyway, when he’s using those flippers to swim and is an awkward lump of lard on the land? It’s not like he could whip around and gouge a hole in a polar bear with those.

Though he could probably bite one’s leg off.

That’s probably a good part of why kissing him when he’s partly a seal is so weird. Because he’s gotten a look at what’s inside that mouth in the seal form and it’s just disconcerting to know that all of that hardware is waiting for him to shift back into it at a moment’s notice.

For now, though, Bucky is a mountain of blubber dusted with sand like a sugared donut, smelling very faintly of fur and salt and sea, rolled up after considerable effort beside Sam’s umbrella.

And that’s just too good an opportunity to pass up.

Sam walks a loop around him, conscious of Steve watching his every move with amusement, and takes in the various elements of his boyfriend.

“Do the banana pose,” he says when he gets back around to Bucky’s head. Because if there is such a thing as a banana pose, he will consider it cosmic robbery if he doesn’t get to see Bucky in that pose.

Bucky tilts that massive head on more of a neck than Sam thought seals had, but doesn’t arch his head and flippers upward.

“I know you can understand me like this, Barnes.” Sam crosses his arms. “You already showed your hand there, and yes, I just made a hand joke.”

Bucky snorts loudly and rolls over onto his back, getting sand everywhere it hadn’t already gotten. But no banana pose.

“What’s banana pose?” Steve asks from his beach chair.

Sam turns around, but only partly—gotta keep at least one eye on his trickster selkie boyfriend. “You know.” He gestures. “Banana pose. I know it’s a real thing. I googled it.”

A wad of sand thwacks him in the calves, launched by Bucky’s rear flippers and accompanied by a wet snorffle. 

“I did,” Sam insisted. “I googled it and it’s a thing.”

“But what _is_ it?”

Sam curls his hand into a cup shape. “Head and tail up off the sand and in the air. Like a banana. It’s supposed to keep them warm?”

Steve’s eyes light up. “Oh, that!” He grins. “Yeah, Bucky does that sometimes, but only when it’s hot out. I think he needs to cool off more than warm up.”

And that makes sense, sure. If he was born in the arctic somewhere, or up north, anyway, he’s probably used to cold more than the other. It might actually be pretty hot for him down here. But Steve’s right about one thing—if this was in some way inhospitable to him, he’d have complained.

No complaints means he’ll get two whole weeks to enjoy Bucky’s seal antics… and also some more of that ancient selkie knowledge put to good use in the bedroom. Just not half-and-half or in the body of a massive seal.

Bucky twists around again to rest on his side facing them and snorts. And then, oh yes, pulls up his flippers and holds them up off the sand, splayed out and waggling for air circulation.

On the one hand, that hints that he’s uncomfortable, but on the other hand, it’s not any different from fanning himself and it’s adorable seeing the ripples of pudge along his lower body as he suns himself.

Plus, there’s something about being able to hold that pose unwavering for however long that hints at some serious musculature under all that blubber… which is unexpectedly appealing even from seal-Bucky.

Maybe he’s got some serious thinking to do over these next two weeks about the nature of his attraction to this guy.


	7. Well Earned Vacation

They fall into a pattern shortly after Steve takes off for his mission with Natasha. 

Mornings are spent on a very hands-on recap of their evening’s lovemaking shenanigans, followed by some shower sex because it turns out Bucky is voracious in more ways than just food and terrible romance novels… and the novelty—and intensity—of that appetite is _not_ wearing off. 

Then breakfast and beach time, and if Sam doesn’t get a run in… Is it really an issue? He decides by the second day that it’s fine, because he’s definitely getting a workout in still, just in a horizontal fashion. One way or another, he’s keeping in shape.

They spend a good deal of time swimming in the mornings before it really heats up as the sun rises overhead, and then they go exploring the island after eating way too much for lunch. Sam can see why Stark bought the place, even if it’s technically an outrageous thing to do, buying an island.

They find an R&D area partly belowground off the rockier edge of the island on the fifth day of their vacation, and Bucky takes them down to the underwater entrance it would otherwise take a submersible or a SCUBA suit to get to.

The water is a darker indigo than higher up near the surface or along the shallower shoreline, but still crystal clear with faint rays of sunlight breaking the expanse of blue with varied lighter beams. And the clear glass of the research areas themselves, walled off from the water but still seeming almost a part of it, lend themselves to the otherworldly atmosphere.

They might not be able to get into the actual research areas, but the sea entrance with its glassed-in, pressurized air lock and docking bay makes a great place to rest and catch his breath while watching Bucky frolic and twirl in the water. It’s a much better view than he’d otherwise get, and Sam brings a meal along the next time they head out that way.

Which is how he finds himself in his swim trunks sitting on an oxygenated platform looking out at his three-flippered selkie boyfriend one afternoon—and he will never get tired of that reference for Bucky: his boyfriend, after months of wishful thinking. 

And Bucky takes advantage of every opportunity to remind him of that full designation, too. The arm and hand jokes have continued unabated, the selkie jokes have only gotten more and more outrageous, and if there’s an opportunity to nuzzle into Sam’s space, Bucky has taken it.

Even as a seal.

Sam’s only three bites into his sandwich when Bucky bobs up to the surface of the platform between his knees, neck stretched out, nostrils sniffing at the sandwich and eyes somehow looking very much like a dog’s. Sea Doggo, indeed.

Bucky opens his maw wide enough for Sam to see the mottled dark spots along the pink interior and to get a very, _very_ good look at the trident teeth and long canines. 

Sam looks from his sandwich to Bucky’s still-open mouth, shrugs, and feeds him the sandwich. Why not? There’s plenty more back at the chalet, and he’s not terribly hungry after their brunch anyway.

Plus, it’s fun to watch Bucky spin around in the water like a beautifully fat ballerina blowing bubbles out both sides of his mouth in response. 

The almost eerie radar-beep sounds he makes as he does so are something Bucky hasn’t been able to provide much explanation for other than, “why shouldn’t we be able to make sounds underwater?”

It’s apparently nothing so formal as a universal selkie language, but the meaning is understood by most aquatic mammals, magic or mundane. For all that, though, Bucky still isn’t able to translate the sounds into words for him.

It’s mostly sentiments, he’d said. More displays of happiness or anger or territorial claims, and less statements of fact or questions or desires. A way to communicate states of being.

The next time Bucky zooms past his perch, Sam pats the platform next to himself, confident that Bucky’s paying him enough attention to catch the motion or pick up the vibrations. It’s possible Bucky is paying him _all_ of the attention, putting on a show for him as much as he is stretching seal muscles.

And he’s right, because Bucky curves in on himself like a pudgy eel and takes a dive before launching himself out of the water and up onto the docking platform, inching around precariously until he’s facing Sam and balanced just so in a glorious banana pose that has the top of his head almost touching his flippers and wrinkles of pelt spanning his whole back.

“You goof,” Sam tells him. “Shift back, I want to cuddle.”

There’s a pause as Bucky apparently weighs “cuddle with boyfriend on high-tech underwater airlock platform” and “act like a silly asshole playing on a slippery balance beam and probably knock said boyfriend off into the water.” 

It takes a remarkable amount of time for him to decide.

But cuddles _do_ win out in the end, and the seal on the platform wiggles in place until a very naked Bucky shrugs off his pelt and scoots closer, wrapping the wet pelt around both of their shoulders. It’s heavy and somehow warm, and feels more like being wrapped up in loving arms than like having a soggy expanse of fur draped over him.

He wants to pick up the flipper on his side—just the one, the right fore flipper—and run his fingers along the claws, feel the bones and webbing of furry skin between them. He doesn’t do that, though, just in case. Who knows what counts as theft? 

“Thanks for the sandwich,” Bucky says, nuzzling into Sam’s neck. “Wasn’t sure you’d feed me.”

“Wasn’t sure you even wanted a bite,” Sam says back. And he hadn’t been sure it wasn’t just another toothy, lookit-my-mouth display. Those are apparently threat displays in some circles, but can double as a lot of other things in selkie culture, depending on the circumstances.

In this case, it could have been “see? I have teeth, hee hee” or even “let’s play” or “let’s go for another swim.” The lighthearted, playful side is definitely a surprise of all this selkie business.

The Bucky Sam knew before this definitely had fun, but he was more sassy and sharp about it, and a lot less goofy. It was a serious sort of fun, often used as a shield to hide a vulnerability. As a seal, though, he’s practically a clown in a lot of ways and almost carefree.

“Want a bite of you,” Bucky murmurs before nipping his neck and latching on to start a hickey. 

Sam’s practically covered in love bites from neck to navel, with a few stray marks on his inner thighs when Bucky just can’t help himself, and that’s another thing that little open-mouthed display can signal: biting as affection.

Which kind of almost makes sense if you’re bobbing around in the water without opposable thumbs, but still.

It’s a good thing Sam has an appreciation for the finer arts of hickey sucking.

He moans happily at the suction and the little nips and bites that punctuate Bucky’s lapping at his skin, and pulls Bucky closer. If he could be entirely sure that Stark didn’t have a perfect view of this platform from anywhere in the world at his fingertips, Sam would have let Bucky suck him off here a dozen times already, and not just suck on his neck.

Bucky’s splayed out hand on his belly doesn’t stray downward, but instead remains along his abs. Even though he’s playing by the rules—no sex in front of the cameras—Sam can tell he wants to reach into his swim trunks and make use of the one hand he’s currently got.

Maybe after a few more minutes of this, they’ll head back to the surface, and from there, have a bit of beach sex before showering sand out of uncomfortable places.

There’s a jacuzzi they still haven’t gotten around to trying… 

* * *

“So tell me how I’d go about accidentally stealing your pelt,” Sam says after he’s recovered from a frankly brain-destroying underwater blowjob courtesy of ancient selkie he doesn’t even know what. “You know, so I can be sure I don’t do it.”

Bucky lifts a foot up out of the water and inspects his toes for a moment before dipping his foot back in. They’ve been sitting in this jacuzzi for nearly an hour and unlike Sam’s toes, his haven’t even begun to prune up.

“It’s bothering you, huh?”

Well, yes. He wouldn’t be asking if it didn’t. He’d be letting it sit by the wayside like something that didn’t really matter. But it does. It matters a lot, and it’s been weighing on his mind since he first learned it was possible.

This afternoon’s stint underwater, with the pelt stretched out across both their shoulders feeling warm and cozy despite being sopping wet… Could he have made a mistake? Was that a possibility, a bullet he dodged? What would have happened if he’d picked up a corner of it to snuggle tighter? He’d picked up a corner in the poacher’s shack, and that was okay… 

He’s got to know these things if he’s going to be a good boyfriend and decent human being instead of a modern day fisherman in the selkie-capturing sense.

Bucky nods, but makes no move to scoot away in the water to face him or do anything but continue to plaster himself to Sam’s side with the metal arm out of the water and around Sam’s shoulders.

“Right,” he says. “So first things first, selkies drew the shitty stick when it comes to magic fun stuff. So if it doesn’t sound fair, that’s fine. A lot of it isn’t. We’re not the top of the magical pecking order by a long shot.”

“Okay…” Sam looks at the pile of fur off to Bucky’s right. “So beyond just someone finding your pelt and making off with it, what all can go wrong by mistake? Because I’m not going to steal anything, but this is _not_ going to be an ‘accidents happen’ kind of relationship.”

Bucky bites his lower lip and looks downright torn between kissing on him some more and grinning. Thankfully he chooses to talk, instead. Sam doesn’t want to have to turn down advances he very much wants to enjoy later.

“As a selkie, if you’re not careful enough,” Bucky says, “you can set yourself up for disaster. It’s not like you’re asking for it, but…” He shrugs. “A lot of people will still say you were asking for it.”

Sam doesn’t like the way that sounds—not just the fact that there are people out there who are in on the selkie secret and like to play the victim-blaming card, but also the way Bucky’s borderline accepted that narrative, what with “setting yourself up for disaster” and “if you’re not careful enough.”

“So remember last summer when Barton was trying to help Nat make some cupcakes for Steve’s birthday?” Bucky asks. “And he thought she was done with the flour and put it away, but she was making a second batch and still needed it?”

Sam does not remember, no. He knows it happened, the cupcakes. But the only details he was ever privy to were that Natasha had made cupcakes and that Clint was a disaster in the kitchen, not a helper. But he gestures for Bucky to go on.

“Well, in selkie terms, Barton stole her flour and then hid it from her in the pantry.”

Sam blinks. “It was her own pantry. He didn’t steal anything. He just put it away.”

Bucky shrugs. “That’s the way it works. So if I have my pelt in a pack, let’s say, and someone oh-so-helpfully grabs that for me, they’ve stolen my pelt, and that’s my own damn fault for being careless and leaving it laying around.”

Sam’s about to insist that it wouldn’t be Bucky’s fault—because fuck that, it _wouldn’t_ be his fault—but Bucky beats him to it.

“Technically, it’s not really _anyone’s_ fault. I know that. But it _is_ careless.” 

The level of paranoia required to avoid making such a “careless” mistake sheds a whole lot of light on Bucky’s general levels of paranoia and grumpiness about people helping him with things. And some of Steve’s mother-henning makes a bit of sense, too, if he’s consciously trying to arrange for no one to get close to grabbing the wrong thing.

“I’ve got people trained not to lift shit for me,” Bucky adds, “no matter how bulky it is or how full my arms are. Because that way they aren’t picking up the one thing I don’t want them handling. Or worse, putting it down somewhere I can’t immediately pick it back up myself.”

“Because if they put it somewhere you don’t see it, they hid it from you and now you’re married to them.”

Bucky hesitates, and then finally nods—a sure sign that Sam’s gotten something about that wrong but Bucky’s hoping not to clarify. 

Sam makes a mental note to revisit that bit.

“Steve was only worried because you didn’t know what it would mean if you grabbed my pack, is all.” Bucky gives him a half-grin. “And it turns out he knew you had a thing for me, the secret-keeping little rat, and that you might have been extra helpful.”

He sobers. “Or that one of the flight crew thought they were helping me out since I was down an arm. Or… you know. Just.” He shrugs again, this time not carefree in the slightest. “Accidents happen.”

“But you could get unmarried,” Sam says, letting the statement serve as a question. “Selkie-divorced. Something, if you saw your pack and took it back, right? If it was just an accident, and no one meant to steal anything or hide anything. There’s an undo button.”

“Eeh.” Bucky see-saws his hand over the water. “People can usually feel something shift around inside them, like they don’t want to give it back, even if they don’t know what it is they’ve got. Accidents… only _start out_ accidental. For the most part.”

“That is some bullshit,” Sam mutters.

“Well, I’m inclined to agree, but I didn’t make the rules, and ignoring them because I don’t like them is literally asking for it.” He a hand up to forestall Sam’s objection. “No, Sammy-doll. It is. The rules are the rules. You don’t piss them off by ignoring them. That’s begging for consequences.”

“Oh, now the rules are _sentient?_ What—”

“Not sentient. But aware, kind of? It’s complicated. There’s not really a lot of words for it, because it’s just… Understood. It’s a given. There’s rules of magic that are like laws of physics. You step off a cliff without any flight ability and you’re asking to fall. Gravity’s not out to get you. It’s just there.”

“Like karma. The bastardized Western version of it where what goes around comes around.”

Bucky ponders for a second before agreeing. “I mean, it’s close, anyway.”

Sam thinks back to the quinjet. The way Bucky had let him carry his severed arm and not his pack. The way Bucky had mildly kept a hand on the strap even when the flight crew reminded him he could stow it with the rest. Damn. Even the way he’d held it on his lap on the flight out there in the first place.

“What if…” Sam doesn’t remember Bucky specifically rushing to snatch up his pack when the quinjet arrived for them. Doesn’t remember thinking about it, either way. Just grabbed a pack and accepted the arm.

“What if I’d picked up the wrong pack, back there when they came to collect us?” 

He hadn’t, of course. But if he had, if he’d “felt something shift” when accidentally stealing the pelt, he could have set it back down, anyway, right? Selkies aren’t sirens, or at least he doesn’t think they are. “Something shifting” couldn’t be some kind of mind-altering call to trap another sentient being, even if fairy tale rules are in effect.

Bucky’s studying him when he looks over to see why the answer is so long in coming. He looks curious, maybe like he’s trying to read Sam’s thought process, but not worried. That’s a relief, at least.

“Well,” he finally says, “by then, you knew what was going on. I’m guessing you’d have handed it over and said something about getting them mixed up, and I’d have told to you just put it down and walk away.” 

Bucky slides even closer somehow and kisses his cheek. “I don’t think for a hot second you’d have played keep-away, hon.”

It’s nice to hear, but also misses Sam’s point. He doesn’t need reassurance that he’s a decent human being with a sound moral compass. He needs to know how to fix a mistake, even if someone else makes it.

“That would have counted as stealing your pelt, though,” Sam says. “Even if I didn’t then hide it. Would just stealing it be enough to ruin everything, or does it have to be hidden, too? Does it have to be hidden where you can’t find it or does hidden in plain sight still work?”

Sam pauses. “I’m trying to learn the rules. So I can try to keep an eye out, watch your six, something.”

Bucky nods. “Okay. If I can’t get to it, then it counts as hidden. Even if I’m looking right at it.” He sighs. “If you picked up my pack and tossed it in the cargo hold for me, and then they closed it up for the flight back, that would have been bad.”

Sam shudders. That is an unfairly thin margin of error. If Sam was a selkie, he’d keep his pelt under lock and key. Though he’s betting there’s some reason that’s not an option, since the ever-paranoid Bucky apparently brings his with him on ops to take out HYDRA bases, which is just a recipe for disaster any way you slice it.

“I’d be able to selkie-divorce you when we landed, though, right? Hand you your pack back once we disembarked? Maybe said a few magic words? Or are there magic divorce wizards we’d have to call?”

Bucky frowns at him. “You couldn’t hand it back. I’d have to take it. Either ‘find’ my pack while you weren’t looking and then pick it up, or else grab it from you. And since you’d probably be holding it out to me, I’d have to at least knock you over to make sure it was really me _stealing_ it back. It’s gotta be theft.”

“The rules can tell?”

“Eh.” Bucky shrugs. “Intention matters, but not always the way you think it does. If you handed it back and tried to undo things, you’d be subverting the rules and they’d snap back in your face. If you didn’t even know what you’d done, the rules might take pity on you. It varies.”

“That’s seriously messed up. You know that, right?”

“It’s just the way it is, hon. Sometimes you gotta live with the shit straw you drew, and spend the rest of your life polishing that turd into gold.”

Polishing—? 

“What does that mean? In the context of selkies.”

“Not sure yet. This is still pretty new and I’m not done with the ‘fucking you into a senseless blob of pleasured putty’ part of this relationship. But…” Bucky twines their fingers under the water. “I’m just wondering if I might not mind it so much if you _did_ go fishing someday.”

“If I went fishing,” Sam says flatly. Is that what he thinks it is? A joke about pelt-stealing and fisherman’s wives? Or husbands, in this case? They might have been biding their time for months before that op in the arctic, but they’ve still only been an item for a few weeks now… Surely that’s a bit fast?

“ _Someday_ ,” Bucky reiterates. “In the future. If this all works out.” 

Bucky grins and slides away from him the water, only to turn to face him and straddle his hips, resting his elbows on Sam’s shoulders and pressing close for a kiss. 

“And anyway,” he says as he pulls back only slightly, “you’d have to propose first.”

Sam scoffs up at him, practically into his mouth because Bucky doesn’t care for personal space and Sam doesn’t mind that one bit. 

“Oh, you’re going to make _me_ do the proposing, are you?” Sam wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist and threads his fingers together at the small of his back. “After I went through all that trouble to fall through the ice just to get you to notice me?”

“Mm, I’d noticed you long before that, doll.”

Then Bucky’s at his neck again, not even bothering to find a blank spot but going over the newer hickey he’d left that afternoon on the underwater platform and making _noises_ while sucking and nibbling like he’s a desperate man and Sam is the only thing that will save him.

Sam tilts his head to give Bucky more room to work, and lets his eyes drift shut in pleasure. Theoretically, a guy could get used to this, but it’s been nearly two weeks now, and he hasn’t yet. 

He’s starting to doubt he ever will.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [Tumblr](https://flamingo-queen-writes.tumblr.com/)! ^_^


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